Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Brett Weinstein evolutionary biologist
author co-host of the Dark Horse podcast
and as he says reluctant radical even
though we've never met or spoken before
this we both felt like we've been
friends for a long time I don't agree on
everything with Brett but I'm sure as
hell happy he exists in this weird and
wonderful world of ours
quick mention of our sponsors Jordan
Harbor to show expressvpn magic spoon
and for sigmatic check them out in the
description to support this podcast
as a side note let me say a few words
about covid-19 and about science broadly
I think science is beautiful and
Powerful it is the striving of the human
mind to understand and to solve the
problems of the world
but as an institution it is susceptible
to the flaws of human nature to fear to
Greed power and ego
2020 is the story of all of these that
has both scientific Triumph and tragedy
we needed great leaders and we didn't
get them what we needed is leaders who
communicate in an honest transparent and
authentic way about the uncertainty of
what we know and the large-scale
scientific efforts to reduce that
uncertainty and to develop Solutions
I believe there are several candidates
for solutions that could have all saved
hundreds of billions of dollars and
lessened or eliminated the suffering of
millions of people
let me mention five of the categories of
solutions masks at home testing
anonymized contact tracing antiviral
drugs and vaccines within each of these
categories institutional leaders should
have constantly asked and answered
publicly honestly the following three
questions one what data do we have on
the solution and what studies are we
running to get more and better data two
given the current data and uncertainty
how effective and how safe is the
solution three what is the timeline and
cost involved with mass manufacturing
distribution of the solution
and the service of these questions no
voices should have been silenced no
ideas left off the table open data open
science open on a scientific
communication and debate was the way not
censorship
there are a lot of ideas out there that
are bad wrong dangerous but the moment
we have the hubris to say we know which
ideas those are is the moment we'll lose
our ability to find the truth to find
Solutions the very things that make
science beautiful and Powerful in the
face of all the dangers that threaten
the well-being and the existence of
humans on Earth
this conversation with Brett is less
about the ideas we talk about we agree
on some disagree on others it is much
more about the very freedom to talk to
think to share ideas this freedom is our
only hope Brett should never have been
censored I asked Brad to do this podcast
to show solidarity and to show that I
have hope for Science and for Humanity
this is the Lux Friedman podcast and
here's my conversation with Brett
Weinstein
what to you is beautiful about the study
of biology the science the engineering
the philosophy of it it's a very
interesting question I must say at one
level
it's not a conscious thing I can say a
lot about why as an adult I find biology
compelling but as a kid I was completely
fascinated with animals I loved to watch
them and think about why they did what
they did and that developed into a very
conscious passion as an adult but I
think
uh in the same way that one is drawn to
a person I was drawn to the never-ending
series of near Miracles that exists
across biological nature when you see a
living organism do you see it from an
evolutionary biology perspective of like
this entire thing that moves around in
this world or do you see like from an
engineering perspective that like uh
first principles almost down to the
physics like the little components that
build up hierarchies they have cells if
the first proteins and cells and organs
and all that kind of stuff so you see
low level or do you see high level
well the human mind is a strange thing
and I think it's probably a bit like a
time sharing machine in which I have
different modules we don't know enough
about biology for them to connect right
so they exist in isolation and I'm
always aware that they do connect but I
basically have to step into a module in
order to see The evolutionary dynamics
of the creature and the lineage that it
belongs to I have to step into a
different module to think of that
lineage over a very long time scale a
different module still to understand
what the mechanisms inside would have to
look like to account for what we can see
from the outside and
I think that probably sounds really
complicated but
one of the things about being
involved in a topic like biology and
doing so for one you know really not
even just my adult life for my whole
life is that it becomes second nature
and you know when when we see somebody
do an amazing Parkour routine or
something like that
we think about what they must be doing
in order to accomplish that but of
course what they are doing is tapping
into some kind of zone right they are in
a Zone in which they are in such
command of their center of gravity for
example that they know how to hurl it
around a landscape so that they always
land on their feet
um and I would just say
for anyone who hasn't found a topic on
which they can develop that kind of
facility it is absolutely worthwhile
it's really something that human beings
are capable of doing across a wide range
of topics many things our ancestors
didn't even have access to and that
flexibility of humans that ability to
repurpose our machinery for topics that
are novel means really the world is your
oyster you can you can figure out what
your passion is and then figure out all
of the angles that one would have to
pursue to really deeply understand it
and it is uh it is well worth having at
least one topic like that you mean
embracing the full adaptability of the
both the the body and the mind so like
because I don't know what to attribute
to parkour to like biomechanics of how
our bodies can move
or is it the mind like how much percent
wise is it the entirety
of the hierarchies of biology that we've
been talking about or is it just all
the mind the way to think about
creatures is that every creature is two
things simultaneously a creature is a
machine of sorts right it's not a
machine in in the you know it's it's I
call it an aqueous machine right and
it's run by an aqueous computer right so
it's not identical to our our
technological machines but
every creature is both a machine that
does things in the world sufficient to
accumulate enough resources to continue
surviving to reproduce
it is also a potential so each creature
is potentially
for example the most recent common
ancestor of some future clate of
creatures that will look very different
from it and if a creature is very very
good at being a creature but not very
good in terms of the potential it has
going forward then that lineage will not
last very long into the future because
change will throw at challenges that its
descendants will not be able to meet so
the thing about humans is we are a
generalist platform
and we have the ability to swap out our
software to exist in many many different
niches and I was once watching a an
interview with with this uh British
group of Parkour experts who were being
you know just they were discussing what
it is they do and how it works and what
they essentially said is look you're
tapping into deep monkey stuff
right and I thought yeah that's about
right and you know anybody who
is proficient at something like skiing
or skateboarding you know has the
experience of
flying down the hill on skis for example
bouncing from the top of one Mogul to
the next and if you really pay attention
you will discover that your conscious
mind is actually a spectator it's there
it's involved in the experience but it's
not driving some part of you knows how
to ski and it's not the part of you that
knows how to think and
I would just say that the what accounts
for this flexibility in humans is the
ability to bootstrap a new software
program
and then drive it into the unconscious
layer where it can be applied very
rapidly
and you know I will be shocked if the
exact thing doesn't exist in robotics
you know if you if you programmed a
robot to deal with circumstances that
were novel to it how would you do it it
would have to look something like this
this is a certain kind of magic
you're right well the Consciousness
being an observer when you play guitar
for example or piano for me music
when you get truly lost in it I don't
know what the heck is responsible for
the flow of the music the kind of the
loudness of the music going up and down
the timing the intricate like even the
mistakes all those things that doesn't
seem to be the conscious mind
uh it's it is just observing and yet
it's somehow intricately involved more
like because you mentioned parkour the
dance is like that too when you start
I've been Tango dancing if when you
truly lose yourself in it
then it's just like you're an observer
and how the hell is the body able to do
that and not only that it's the physical
motion is also creating the emotion the
like that damn was good to be alive
feeling
so but then that's also intricately
connected to the full biology stack that
we're operating in I don't know how
difficult it is to replicate that we're
talking offline about Boston Dynamics
robots
um they've recently been they did both
parkour they did flips they've also done
some dancing
and something I think a lot about
because what most people don't realize
because they don't look deep enough as
those robots are hard-coded to do those
things
the the robots didn't figure it out by
themselves and yet the the fundamental
aspect of what it means to be human is
that process of figuring out of making
mistakes and then there's something
about overcoming those challenges and
the mistakes and like figuring out how
to lose yourself in the magic of the
dancing
uh or just movement is what it means to
be human that learning process so that's
what I want to do with the with the uh
almost as a fun side thing with the the
Boston Dynamics robots is to have them
learn and see what they figure out
even if it even if they make mistakes I
want to let
spot make mistakes and and so doing
discover what it means to be alive
discover Beauty because I think that's
the essential aspect of mistakes
Boston Dynamics folks want spot to be
perfect because they don't want spot to
ever make mistakes because it wants to
operate in the factories it wants to be
you know very safe and so on for me if
you construct the environment if you
construct a safe space for robots and
allow them to make mistakes Something
Beautiful might be discovered but that
requires a lot of brain power so spot is
currently very dumb
and I'm going to add it give it a brain
so first make it C currently can't see
meaning computer vision has to
understand this environment has to see
all the humans but then also has to be
able to learn learn about its movement
learn how to use his body to communicate
with others all those kinds of things
the dogs know how to do well humans know
how to do somewhat well I think that's a
beautiful challenge but first you have
to allow the robot to make mistakes well
I think
um your objective is laudable but you're
going to realize that the Boston
Dynamics folks are right the first time
spot poops on your rug
I hear the same thing about kids and so
on yeah but I still want to have kids no
you should it's it's a great experience
um so let me step back into what you
said in a couple of different places one
I have always believed that the missing
element in robotics and artificial
intelligence is a proper development
right it is no accident it is no mere
coincidence that human beings are the
most dominant species on planet Earth
and that we have the longest childhoods
of any creature on Earth by far right
the development is the key to the
flexibility and so uh the capability of
a human at adulthood is the mirror image
it's the flip side of our helplessness
at Birth so I'll be very interested to
see what happens in your uh robot
project if you do not end up Reinventing
childhood for robots which of course is
foreshadowed in 2001 quite brilliantly
but I also want to point out you can you
can see this issue of your conscious
mind becoming a spectator very well if
you compare tennis to table tennis
right if you watch a tennis game
you could imagine that the players are
highly conscious as they play
you cannot imagine that if you've ever
played ping pong decently a volley in
ping pong is so fast that your conscious
mind if it had if your reactions had to
go through your conscious mind you
wouldn't be able to play so you can
detect that your conscious mind while
very much present isn't there and you
can also detect where Consciousness does
usefully intrude if you go up against an
opponent in table tennis that knows a
trick that you don't know how to respond
to you will suddenly detect that
something about your game is not
effective and you will start thinking
about what might be how do you position
yourself so that move that puts the ball
just in that corner of the table or
something like that doesn't catch you
off guard and
this I believe is
we highly conscious folks those of us
who try to think through things very
deliberately and carefully
mistake Consciousness for like the
highest kind of thinking and I really
think that this is an error
Consciousness is an intermediate level
of thinking what it does is it allows
you it's basically like uncompiled code
and it doesn't run very fast it is
capable of being adapted to new
circumstances but once the code is
roughed in right it gets driven into the
unconscious layer and you become highly
effective at whatever it is and that
from that point your conscious mind
basically remains there to detect things
that aren't anticipated by the code
you've already written and so
I don't exactly know how
one would establish this how one would
demonstrate it but it must be the case
that the human mind contains
sandboxes in which things are tested
right maybe you can build a piece of
code and run it in parallel next to your
active code so you can see how it would
have done comparatively but there's got
to be some way of writing new code and
then swapping it in and frankly I think
this has a lot to do with things like
sleep cycles very often you know when I
get good at something I often don't get
better at it while I'm doing it I get
better at it when I'm not doing it
especially if there's time to sleep and
think on it so there's some sort of you
know new program swapping in for old
program phenomenon which
um
you know will be a lot easier to see in
machines it's going to be hard with the
the wet wear I like I mean it is true
because somebody that played I played
tennis for many years
I do still think the highest form of
excellence in tennis is when the
conscious mind is a spectator so it's
the compiled code is the
highest form of Being Human and then
Consciousness is just some like specific
compiler you just have like Borland C
plus plus compiler you could just have
different kind of compilers ultimately
the the thing that by which we measure
the
the power of Life the intelligence of
life is the compiled code and you can
probably do that compilation all kinds
of ways yeah yeah I'm not saying that
tennis is played consciously and table
tennis isn't I'm saying that because
tennis is slowed down by the just the
space on the court you could you could
imagine that it was your conscious mind
playing but when you shrink the court
down that was obvious it becomes obvious
that your conscious mind is just present
rather than knowing where to put the
paddle and weirdly for me
um I would say this probably isn't true
in a podcast situation
but if I have to give a presentation uh
especially if I have not overly prepared
I often find the same phenomenon when
I'm giving the presentation my conscious
mind is there watching some other part
of me present which uh is a little
jarring I have to say
well that means you've you've gotten
good at it not let the conscious mind
get in the way of the flow of words
yeah that's that's the sensation to be
sure and that's the highest form of
podcasting too I mean that's why I have
that that's what it looks like when a
podcast is really in the pocket like
like Joe
Rogan just having fun
and just losing themselves and that's
that's something I aspire to as well
just losing yourself in conversation
somebody that has a lot of anxiety with
people like I'm such an introvert I'm
scared I'm scared before you showed up
I'm scared right now
um there's just anxiety there's just
it's a giant mess uh it's hard to Lose
Yourself it's hard to just
get out of the way of your own mind yeah
actually uh trust is a big component of
that your your conscious mind retains
control if you are very uncertain
um but when you do when you do get into
that zone when you're speaking I realize
it's different for you with English as a
second language although maybe you
present in Russian and and you know and
it happens but do you ever hear yourself
say something and you think oh that's
really good
right like like you didn't come up with
it some other part of you that you don't
exactly know
came up with it I I don't think
I've ever heard myself
in that way because I have a much louder
voice that's constantly yelling in my
head at why the hell did you say that
there's a very self-critical voice
that's much louder so I'm very
um maybe I need to deal with that voice
but it's been like with what is it
called like a megaphone just screaming
so I can't hear it oh no it says good
job you said that thing really nicely so
I'm kind of focused right now on on the
megaphone person in the audience versus
the the positive but that's definitely
something to think about it's been
productive
but
you know the the place where I find
gratitude and beauty and appreciation of
Life is In The Quiet Moments When I
don't talk when I listen to the world
around me when I listen to others
um when I talk I'm extremely
self-critical in my mind uh when I when
I produce anything out into the world
that's that originated with me like any
kind of creation extremely self-critical
it's good for productivity for like
always striving to improve and so on
it might be bad for
for like just appreciating the things
you've created I'm a little bit with
Marvin
Minsky on this where he says the the key
to
um
to a productive life is to hate
everything you've ever done in the past
I didn't know he said that I must say I
resonate with it a bit
and you know I I unfortunately my life
currently has me putting a lot of stuff
into the world and I effectively
watch almost none of it I can't stand it
yeah what what do you make of that I
don't know I just recently I just
yesterday read um metamorphosis by kind
of re-read metamorphosis by Kafka where
he turns into John Bug because of the
stress that the world puts on him
his parents put on him to succeed and
you know I think that's you have to find
the balance
because if you if you allow the
self-critical voice to become too heavy
the burden of the world the pressure
that the world puts on you to be the
best version of yourself and so on to
strive
then
you become a bug and that's a big
problem and then uh and then and then
the World Turns against you
because you're a bug you become some
kind of caricature of yourself uh I
don't know
become the worst version of yourself and
then thereby end up destroying yourself
and then the world moves on that's the
story that's a lovely story
I do think this is one of these places
and frankly you could map this onto all
of modern Human Experience but this is
one of these places where our ancestral
programming does not serve our modern
selves yeah so I used to talk to
students about the question of dwelling
on things you know dwelling on things is
famously understood to be bad
and it can't possibly be that it
wouldn't exist a tendency toward it
wouldn't exist if it was bad
so what is bad is dwelling on things
past the point of utility
and
you know that's obviously easier to say
than the operationalize but if you
realize that your dwelling is the key in
fact to upgrading your program for
future well-being and that there's a
point you know presumably from
diminishing returns if not
counterproductivity there is a point at
which you should stop because that is
what is in your best interest then
knowing that you're looking for that
point is useful right this is the point
at which it is no longer useful for me
to dwell on this error I have made right
that is that's what you're looking for
and it also gives you license right if
some part of you feels like it you know
is punishing you rather than searching
then that also has a point at which it's
no longer valuable and there's some
Liberty in realizing yep even the part
of me that was punishing me knows it's
time to stop
so if we map that on to compile the code
discussion as a computer science person
I find that very compelling you know
there's a
when you compile code you get warnings
sometimes and um usually
if you're a good software engineer
you're going to make sure there's no you
know you treat warnings as errors so you
make sure that the compilation produces
no warnings but a certain point when you
have a large enough system
you just let the warnings go it's fine
like I don't know where that warning
came from but you know
it's just uh ultimately you need to
compile the code and run with it and uh
hope nothing terrible happens well I
think what you will find and believe me
I think what you're what you're talking
about with respect to robots and
learning is going to end up having to go
to a deep developmental State and a
helplessness that evolves into hyper
competence and all of that but um
I live I noticed that I live by
something that I for lack of a better
descriptor called the theory of close
calls
ethereal close calls says that people
typically miscategorize the events in
their life where something almost went
wrong
and you know for example if you I have a
friend who um
I was walking down the street with my
college friends and one of my friends
stepped into the street thinking it was
clear and was nearly hit by a car going
45 miles an hour would have been an
absolute disaster might have killed her
certainly would have permanently injured
her
but she didn't you know car didn't touch
her right now you could walk away from
that and think nothing of it because
well what is there to think nothing
happened or you could think well what is
the difference between what did happen
and my death
the difference is luck I never want that
to be true right I never want the
difference between what did happen and
my death to be luck therefore I should
count this as very close to death
and I should prioritize coding so it
doesn't happen again at a very high
level
so anyway my my basic point is
the
accidents and disasters and Misfortune
describe a distribution that tells you
what's really likely to get you in the
end and so
um personally
you can use them to figure out where the
dangers are so that you can afford to
take great risks because you have a
really good sense of how they're going
to go wrong but I would also point out
civilization has this problem
civilization is now producing these
events that are major disasters but
they're not existential scale yet right
they're very serious errors that we can
see and I would argue that the pattern
is you discover that we are involved in
some industrial process at the point it
has gone wrong right so I'm now always
asking the question
okay in light of the Fukushima triple
meltdown the financial collapse of 2008
the Deepwater Horizon uh blowout
covid-19 and its probable origins in the
Wuhan lab
what processes do I not know the name of
yet that I will Discover at the point
that some gigantic accident has happened
and can we talk about the wisdom or lack
thereof of engaging in that process
before the accident right that's what a
wise civilization would be doing and yet
we don't I I just want to mention
something that happened a couple of days
ago
I don't know if you know who JB Straubel
is is the co-founder of Tesla CTO of
Tesla for many many years his wife just
died
she was riding a bicycle
and in the same
in that same thin line between death and
life that many of us have been in where
you walk into the intersection and
there's this close call
every once in a while
it you get the
the Short Straw
I wonder how much of our own individual
lives and the entirety of the human
civilization rests on this little roll
of the dice
well this is sort of my point about the
close calls is that there's a there's a
level at which we can't control it right
the
gigantic asteroid that comes from deep
space that you don't have time to do
anything about there's not a lot we can
do to hedge that out or at least not
short term
but there are lots of other things you
know obviously
the financial collapse of 2008 didn't
break down the entire world economy it
threatened to but a Herculean effort
managed to pull us back from the brink
the triple meltdown at Fukushima was
awful but every one of the seven fuel
pools held there wasn't a major fire
that made it impossible to manage the
disaster going forward we got lucky
um you know we could say the same thing
about the uh the blowout at the
Deepwater Horizon where a hole in the
ocean floor large enough that we
couldn't have plugged it could have
opened up all of these things could have
been much much worse right and I think
we can say the same thing about covet as
terrible as it is
and I you know we cannot say for sure
that it came from the Wuhan lab but
there's a strong likelihood that it did
and it also could be much much worse so
in each of these cases something is
telling us we have a process that is
unfolding that keeps creating risks
where it is luck that is the difference
between us and some scale of disaster
that is unimaginable and that wisdom you
know you can be highly intelligent and
cause these disasters
to be wise is to stop causing them right
and that would require a process of
restraint
a process that I don't see a lot of
evidence of yet so
I think we have to generate it and
somehow
we you know at the moment we don't have
a political structure that would be
capable of
taking a protective algorithm and
actually deploying it right because it
would have important Economic
Consequences and so it would almost
certainly be shot down
but we can obviously also say you know
we paid a huge price for all of the
disasters that I've mentioned and we
have to factor that into the equation
something can be very productive short
term and very destructive long term and
also the question is how many disasters
we avoided because of the Ingenuity of
humans or just the integrity and
character of humans
that's sort of an open question we may
be more
intelligent than lucky that's the Hope
because the optimistic message here that
you're getting at is
maybe the process that we should be
that maybe we can overcome luck with
Ingenuity meaning
I guess you're suggesting the process is
we should be listing all the ways that
human civilization can destroy itself
assigning likelihood to it
and thinking through how can we avoid
that
and being very honest that with the data
out there about the close calls and
using those close calls to uh to then
create sort of mechanism by which we
minimize the probability of those close
calls and just being honest and
transparent uh with the data that's out
there well I think we need to do a
couple things for it to work
um so I've been an advocate for the idea
that sustainability is actually it's
difficult to operationalize but it is an
objective that we have to meet if we're
to be around long term and I realize
that we also need to have reversibility
of all of our processes because
processes very frequently when they
start do not appear dangerous and then
they when they scale they become very
dangerous so for example if you imagine
and the first internal combustion engine
in a vehicle driving down the street and
you imagine somebody running after them
saying hey if you do enough of that
you're going to alter the atmosphere and
it's going to change the temperature of
the planet it's Preposterous right why
would you stop the person who's invented
this marvelous new Contraption but of
course eventually you do get to the
place where you're doing enough of this
that you do start changing the
temperature of the planet so
if we built the capacity if we basically
said look you can't
involve yourself in any process that you
couldn't reverse if you had to then
progress would be slowed but our safety
would go up dramatically and I think
I think in some sense if we are to be
around long term we have to begin
thinking that way we're just involved in
too many very dangerous processes
so let's talk about one of the things
that if not threatened human
civilization certainly hurt it at a deep
level which is covet 19.
what percent probability would you
currently place
on the hypothesis that covid-19 leaked
from the Wuhan Institute of virology
so I maintain a flow chart of all the
possible explanations and it doesn't
break down exactly that way
the likelihood that it emerged from a
lab is very very high
if it emerged from a lab the likelihood
that the lab was the Wuhan Institute is
very very high
the there are multiple different kinds
of evidence that point to the lab and
there are is literally no evidence that
points to Nature either the evidence
points nowhere or it points to the lab
and the lab could mean any lab but
geographically obviously the labs in
Wuhan are the most likely and the lab
that was most directly involved with
research on viruses that look like covet
that look like SARS cov2 is obviously
the place that one would start
but I would say the likelihood that this
virus came from a lab is well above 95
percent we can talk about the question
of could a virus have been brought into
the lab and escaped from there without
being modified that's also possible but
it doesn't explain any of the anomalies
in the Genome of SARS cov2
could it have been delivered from
another lab could Wuhan be a distraction
in order that we would connect the dots
in the wrong way that's conceivable I
currently have that below one percent on
my flow chart but I have a very dark
thought that somebody would would do
that almost as a a political attack on
China well it depends I don't even think
that's one possibility
sometimes when Eric and I talk about
these issues we will
generate a scenario just to prove that
something could could live in that space
right it's a placeholder for whatever
may actually have happened and so it
doesn't have to have been an attack on
China that's certainly one possibility
but I would point out
if you can predict the future
in some unusual way better than others
you can print money right that's what
markets that allow you to bet for or
against uh virtually any sector allow
you to do so you can imagine
a
simply a moral person or entity
generating a pandemic attempting to
cover their tracks because it would
allow them to bet against things like
you know cruise ships air travel
whatever it is and bet in favor of I
don't know uh
sanitizing gel and whatever else you
would do so am I saying that I think
somebody did that no I really don't
think it happened we've seen zero
evidence that this was intentionally
released
however
were it to have been intentionally
released by somebody who did not know
did not want it known where it had come
from releasing it into Wuhan would be
one way to cover their tracks so we have
to leave the possibility formally open
but acknowledge there's no evidence so
and the probability therefore is low I
tend to believe
maybe this is the optimistic nature that
I have that
people who are competent enough to do
the kind of thing we just described
are not going to do that because it
requires a certain kind of I don't want
to use the word evil but whatever word
you want to use to describe the kind of
uh disregard for human life required to
do that you're just that that that's
just not going to be coupled with
competence I feel like there's a
trade-off chart where confidence on one
axis and evils on the other and the more
evil you become the the the the the
crapper you are doing great engineering
scientific work required to deliver
weapons of different kinds whether it's
bio weapons or nuclear weapons all those
kinds of things that seems to be the
lessons I I take from history but that
doesn't necessarily mean that's what's
going to be happening in the future
but to stick on the lab League idea
because the flowchart is probably huge
here because there's a lot of
fascinating possibilities one question I
want to ask is um what would evidence
for natural Origins look like so
one piece of evidence for natural
Origins is um that it has happened in
the past
that
that viruses have jumped oh they do jump
they so like that's one like that's
possible to have happened you know so
that that's a sort of like a historical
evidence like okay well it's possible
that it hap it's not it's not evidence
of the kind you think it is it's a
justification for a presumption right
right so the presumption upon
discovering a new virus circulating is
certainly that it came from nature right
the problem is the presumption
evaporates in the face of evidence or at
least it logically should and it didn't
in this case it was maintained by people
who privately in their emails
acknowledge that they had grave doubts
about the natural origin of of this
virus is there some other piece of
evidence that we could look for and see
that would say this increases the
probability that it's natural Origins
yeah in fact there is evidence you know
I always worry that somebody is going to
make up some evidence in order to
reverse the flow well let's say I am
it's a lot of incentive for that
actually there's a huge amount of
incentive on the other hand why
didn't the powers that be the powers
that lied to us about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq why didn't they ever
fake weapons of mass destruction
interact whatever force it is I hope
that force is here too and so whatever
evidence we find is real it's the
confidence thing I'm talking about but
okay go ahead sorry well we can get back
to that but I would say yeah the the the
giant piece of evidence that will shift
the probabilities in the other direction
is the discovery of either a human
population in which the virus circulated
prior to showing up in Wuhan that would
explain where the virus learned all of
the tricks that it knew instantly upon
spreading from Wuhan so that would do it
or an animal population in which an
ancestor epidemic can be found in which
the virus learned this before jumping to
humans but I point out in that second
case
you would certainly expect to see a
great deal of evolution in the early
epidemic which we don't see so there
almost has to be a human population
somewhere else that had the virus
circulating or an ancestor of the virus
that we first saw in Wuhan circulating
and it has to have gotten very
sophisticated in that prior epidemic
before hitting Wuhan in order to explain
the total lack of evolution and
extremely effective virus that emerged
at the end of 2019 so you don't believe
in the magic of evolution to spring up
with all the tricks already there like
everybody who doesn't have the tricks
they die quickly and then you just have
this beautiful virus that comes in with
a spike protein and the and the through
mutation and selection just do like the
ones that succeed
and succeed big are the ones that are
going to just spring into life with the
tricks well no
that's that's called a hopeful monster
and hopeful monsters don't work it's to
the job of becoming a new pandemic virus
is too difficult it involves two very
difficult steps and they both have to
work one is the ability to infect a
person and spread in their tissues uh
sufficient to make an infection and the
other is to jump between individuals at
a sufficient rate that it doesn't go
extinct for one reason or another
those are both very difficult jobs they
require as you describe selection and
the point is selection would leave a
mark we would see evidence that in
animals or humans both right and we see
this evolutionary choice of uh of the
virus Gathering the tricks up yeah you
would see the virus you would see the
clumsy virus get better and better and
yes I am a full believer in the power of
that process in fact I believe it uh
what I know from studying the process is
that it is much more powerful than most
people imagine that what we teach in the
evolution 101 textbook is too clumsy a
process to do what we see it doing and
that actually people should increase
their expectation of the rapidity with
which that process can produce
um because jaw-dropping adaptations
that said we just don't see evidence
that it happened here which doesn't mean
it doesn't exist but it means
in spite of immense pressure to find it
somewhere there's been no hint which
probably means it took place inside of a
laboratory so inside the laboratory gain
a function research on viruses
and I believe most of that kind of
research is doing this exact thing that
you're referring to which is accelerated
Evolution and just watching Evolution do
its thing on a bunch of viruses and
seeing what kind of tricks get developed
the other method
is uh engineering viruses so
manually adding on the tricks
what which do you think we should be
thinking about here
so mind you I learned what I know in the
aftermath of this pandemic emerging I
started studying the question and I
would say based on the content of the
genome and other evidence in
Publications from the various Labs that
were involved in in generating this
technology
a couple of things seem likely
this SARS cov2 does not appear to be
entirely the result of either a splicing
process or serial passaging it it
appears to have both uh things in its
past
where it's at least highly likely that
it does so for example the fern cleavage
site looks very much like it was added
in to the virus and it was known that
that would increase its infectivity in
humans and increase its tropism
the uh
virus appears to be excellent at
spreading in humans and minks and
ferrets now minks and ferrets are very
closely related to each other and
ferrets are very likely to have been
used in a Serial passage experiment the
reason being that they have an ace2
receptor that looks very much like the
human acet receptor and so were you
going to passage the virus or it's
ancestor through an animal in order to
increase its infectivity in humans which
would have been necessary
uh ferrets would have been very likely
it is also quite likely that humanized
mice were utilized and it is possible
that human Airway tissue was utilized I
think it is vital that we find out what
the protocols were if this came from the
Wuhan Institute we need to know it and
we need to know what the protocols were
exactly because they will actually give
us some tools that would be useful in
fighting as far as Kobe 2 and hopefully
driving into Extinction which ought to
be our priority it is a priority that
does not it is not Apparent from our
Behavior but it really is uh it should
be our objective if we understood where
our interests lie we would be much more
focused on it but those protocols would
tell us a great deal if it wasn't the
Wuhan Institute we need to know that if
it was nature we need to know that and
if it was some other laboratory we need
to figure out who what and where so that
we can determine what is what we can
determine about about what was done
you're opening up my mind about why we
should
investigate why we should know the truth
of the origins of this virus so for me
personally let me just tell the story of
my own kind of Journey
when I first started looking into the
lab leak hypothesis
what became terrifying to me and
important to under understand an obvious
is the sort of like Sam Harris way of
thinking which is
it's obvious that a lab leak of a deadly
virus will eventually happen
my mind was it doesn't even matter if it
happened in this case it's obvious
there's going to happen in the future so
why the hell are we not freaking out
about this and covid-19 is not even that
deadly relative to the possible future
viruses it's this the way I disagree
with Sam on this but he thinks about
this way about AGI as well I bought a
artificial intelligence it's a different
discussion I think but with viruses it
seems like something that could happen
on a scale of years maybe a few decades
AGI is a little bit farther out for me
but it seemed the terrifying thing it
seemed obvious that this will happen
very soon for a much deadlier virus as
we get better and better at both
engineering viruses and doing this kind
of evolutionary driven research gain
function research
okay but then you started speaking out
about this as well but also started to
say no no we should hurry up and figure
out the origins now because it will help
us figure out how to actually
respond uh to this particular virus how
to treat this particular virus what is
in terms of vaccines in terms of
antiviral drugs in terms of just uh all
the the the the number of responses we
should have okay
I
still I'm much more freaking out about
the future
maybe you can
break that apart a little bit which are
you
most um
focused on now
which are you most freaking out about
now in terms of the importance of
figuring out the origins of this virus
I am most freaking out about both of
them because they're both really
important and you know we can put bounds
on this let me say first this is a
perfect test case for the theory of
close calls because as much as covet is
a disaster it is also a close call from
which we can learn much you are
absolutely right if we keep playing this
game in the lab if we are not if we are
especially if we do it under pressure
and when we are told that a virus is
going to LEAP from nature any day and
that the more we know the better we'll
be able to fight it we're going to
create the disaster all the sooner
so yes that should be an absolute Focus
the fact that there were people saying
that this was dangerous back in 2015 uh
ought to tell us something the fact that
the system bypassed a ban and offshored
the work to China
ought to tell us this is not a Chinese
failure this is a failure of something
larger and harder to see
um but
I also think that there's a there's a
clock ticking with respect to SARS cov2
and covid the disease that it creates
and that has to do with whether or not
we are stuck with it permanently
so if you think about the cost to
humanity of being stuck with influenza
it's an immense cost year after year and
we just stopped thinking about it
because it's there some years you get to
flu most years you don't maybe you get
the vaccine to prevent it maybe the
vaccine isn't particularly well targeted
but imagine just simply doubling that
cost
imagine we get stuck with SARS cov2 and
its descendants going forward and then
it just settles in and becomes a fact of
modern human life that would be a
disaster right the number of people we
will ultimately lose is incalculable the
amount of suffering will be caused is
incalculable the loss of well-being and
wealth incalculable so that ought to be
a very high priority driving this
extinct before it becomes permanent and
the ability to drive it extinct goes
down the longer we delay effective
responses to the extent that we let it
have this very large canvas large
numbers of people who have the disease
in which mutation and selection can
result in adaptation that we will not be
able to counter the greater its ability
to figure out features of our immune
system and use them uh to its Advantage
so I'm feeling the pressure of driving
it extinct I believe we could have
driven an extinct six months ago and we
didn't do it because of very mundane
concerns among a small number of people
and I'm not alleging that they were
Brazen about
um or that they were callous about
deaths that would be caused I have the
sense that they were working from a kind
of autopilot in which you you know let's
say you're in some kind of a corporation
a pharmaceutical Corporation you have a
a portfolio of therapies that in the
context of a pandemic might be very
lucrative those therapies have
competitors you of course want to
position your product so that it
succeeds and the competitors don't and
lo and behold at some point through
means that I think those of us on the
outside can't really uh into it you end
up saying things about competing
therapies that work better and much more
safely than the ones you're selling that
aren't true and do cause people to die
in large numbers
um but it you know it's some kind of
autopilot at least part of it is
so the there's a complicated coupling of
the autopilot of uh
institutions
companies governments
and then there's also the geopolitical
game theory thing going on where you
want to keep secrets it's the Chernobyl
thing where if you messed up
there's a big incentive I think to hide
the fact that you messed up
so how do we fix this and what's more
important to fix the autopilot which is
the response that we often criticize
about our institutions especially the
leaders in those institutions Anthony
fauci and so on uh some of the members
of the scientific community
and the second part is the the game with
China
of hiding the information in terms of on
the fight between nations
well in our live streams on Darkhorse
Heather and I have been talking from the
beginning about the fact that although
yes what happens began in China it very
much looks like a failure of the
international scientific community
and that's frightening but it's also
hopeful in the sense that actually if we
did the right thing now we're not
navigating a puzzle about Chinese
responsibility we're navigating a
question of collective responsibility
for something that has been
terribly costly to all of us so
that's not a very
happy process but as you point out
what's at stake is in large measure at
the very least the strong possibility
this will happen again and that at some
point it will be far worse so you know
just as a person that does not learn the
lessons of their own errors doesn't get
smarter and they remain in danger we
collectively Humanity has to say well
there sure is a lot of evidence that
suggests that this is a self-inflicted
wound
when you have done something that has
caused a massive self-inflicted wound
self-inflicted wound it makes sense to
dwell on it exactly to the point that
you have learned the lesson that makes
it very very unlikely that something
similar will happen again I think this
is a good place to kind of ask you to do
almost like a thought experiment
or um
to Steel Man the argument against the
lab leak hypothesis
so
if you were to
argue you know you said 95 chance that
it the virus leave from a lab
there's a bunch of ways I think you can
argue
that even talking about it
is uh bad for the world
so I if I just put something on the
table is to say that
um
so one it would be racism versus Chinese
people
that talking about that it leak from a
lab there's a kind of immediate kind of
blame and it can spiral down into this
idea that's somehow the people are
responsible for the virus and this kind
of thing
is it possible for you to come up with
other Steel Man arguments
against talking or against the
possibility of the lab League hypothesis
well so I think steel Manning is a tool
that is extremely valuable but it's also
possible to abuse it I think that you
can only steal man a good faith argument
and the problem is we now know that we
have not been engaged in opponents who
are wielding good faith arguments
because privately their emails reflect
their own doubts and what they were
doing publicly was actually a punishment
a public punishment for those of us who
spoke up
with I think the purpose of
either backing us down or more likely
warning others not to engage in the same
kind of behavior and obviously for
people like you and me who regard
science as our likely best hope for
navigating difficult Waters
shutting down people who are using those
tools honorably is itself dishonorable
so I I don't really I don't feel that it
is
I don't feel that there's anything to
steal man and I also think
that you know immediately at the point
that the world suddenly with no new
evidence on the table switched gears
with respect to the lab leak you know at
the point that Nicholas Wade had
published his article and suddenly the
world was going to admit that this was
at least a possibility if not a
likelihood
we got to see something of the
rationalization process that had taken
place inside the institutional world and
it very definitely involved the claim
that what was being avoided was the
targeting of uh Chinese scientists
and my point would be I don't want to
see the targeting of anyone I don't want
to see racism of any kind on the other
hand once you create license to lie in
order to protect individuals when the
world has a stake in knowing what
happened then it is inevitable that that
process that license to lie will be used
by the thing that captures institutions
for its own purposes so my sense is
it may be very unfortunate if the story
of what happened here can be used
against uh Chinese people that would be
very unfortunate and as I think I
mentioned
Heather and I have taken great pains to
point out that this doesn't look like a
Chinese failure it looks like a failure
of the international scientific
community so I think it is important to
broadcast that message along with the
analysis of the evidence but no matter
what happened we have a right to know
and
um I frankly do not take the
institutional layer at its word that its
motivations are honorable and that it
was protecting you know good-hearted
scientists at the expense of the world
that explanation does not add up well
this is a very interesting question
about whether it's ever okay to lie at
the institutional layer to
protect the populace
I think both you and I are probably on
the same
have the same sense that it's a slippery
slope even if it's an effective
mechanism in the short term in the long
term it's going to be destructive
this happened with masks
this happened with with other things if
you look at just history pandemics
there's a there's an idea that Panic is
destructive amongst the populists so you
you want to construct a narrative
whether it's a lie or not to minimize
panic
but you're suggesting that almost in all
cases and I think that was the lesson
from
the the pandemic in the early 20th
century that
lying creates distrust and distrust in
the institutions is ultimately
destructive that's your sense that lying
is not okay well okay you know there are
obviously places where complete
transparency is not a good idea right to
the extent that you broadcast a
technology that allows one individual to
hold the world hostage right obviously
you've got a something to be navigated
but in general I don't believe that the
scientific system should be
lying to us
in the case of this particular lie
the idea that the well-being of Chinese
scientists outweighs the well-being of
the world
is preposterous yeah right as you as you
point out one thing that rests on this
question is whether we continue to do
this kind of research going forward and
the scientists in question all of them
American Chinese all of them were
pushing the idea that the risk of a
zoonotic spillover event causing a major
and highly destructive pandemic was so
great that we had to risk this
now if they themselves have caused it
and if they are wrong as I believe they
are about the likelihood of a major
world pandemic spilling out of nature in
the way that they uh wrote into their
Grant applications then the danger is
you know the call is coming from inside
the house and uh we have to look at that
and yes whatever we have to do to
protect scientists from retribution we
should do but we cannot
protecting them by lying to the world
and even worse
by
demonizing people like me like uh Josh
Rogan like Yuri Dagan the entire drastic
group on Twitter by demonizing us for
simply following the evidence is to set
a terrible precedent right you're
demonizing people for using the
scientific method to evaluate evidence
that is available to us in the world
what a terrible crime it is to teach
that lesson right Thou shalt not use
scientific tools no I'm sorry whatever
your license to lie is it doesn't extend
to that yeah I've seen the the attacks
on you the pressure on you has a very
important effect
on
thousands of world-class biologists
actually so at MIT colleagues of mine
people I know there's a there's a slight
pressure
to not be allowed to uh one speak
publicly and two actually think
like do you even think about these ideas
it sounds kind of ridiculous but just
the in the in the privacy of your own
home to to read things to to think it's
many people many world-class biologists
that I know will just avoid looking at
the data there's not even that many
people that are publicly opposing gain a
function research they they're they're
also like it's not worth it it's not
worth the battle and there's many people
that kind of argue that those battles
should be fought in private
in uh I'm uh you know with colleagues in
the um in the privacy of the scientific
community that the public is somehow not
maybe intelligent enough to be able to
deal with the the complexities of this
kind of discussion I don't know but the
final result is combined with the
bullying View and uh all the different
pressures in the academic institutions
is that it's just people are
self-censoring and silencing themselves
and silencing the most important thing
which is the power of their brains
like these people are brilliant and the
fact that they're not utilizing their
brain to come up with Solutions uh
outside of the conformist line of
thinking it's tragic
well it is I also think that it we have
to look at it and understand it for what
it is for one thing it's kind of a
cryptic totalitarianism somehow people's
sense of what they're allowed to think
about talk about discuss is causing them
to self-censor and I can tell you it's
causing many of them to rationalize
which is even worse they're blinding
themselves to what they can see
um but it is also the case I believe
that what you're describing about what
people said and a great many people
understood that the lab leak hypothesis
could not be taken off the table but
they didn't say so publicly and I think
that their discussions with each other
about why they did not say what they
understood that's what capture sounds
like on the inside I don't know exactly
what force captured the institutions I
don't think uh anybody knows for sure
out here in public
I don't even know that it wasn't just
simply a process but
you have these institutions they are
behaving towards a kind of somatic
obligation they have lost sight of what
they were built to accomplish and on the
inside the way they avoid going back to
their original mission is to say things
to themselves like the public can't have
this discussion it can't be trusted with
it yes we need to be able to talk about
this but it has to be private whatever
it is they say to themselves that is
what capture sounds like on the inside
it's a institutional rationalization
mechanism and it's very very deadly
and at the point you go from Lab leak to
repurposed drugs you can see that it's
very deadly in a very direct way
yeah I see this on in my field of with
uh
things like autonomous weapon systems
people in AI do not talk about the use
of AI and weapon systems they they kind
of avoid the idea that AIS use them in
the military because it's kind of funny
there is there's this like kind of
discomfort and they're like they all
hurry like uh you know like something
scary happens in a bunch of sheep kind
of like run a run away that's what it
looks like and it I don't even know what
to do about it because and then I feel
this natural pull every time I bring up
autonomous weapon systems to go along
with the Sheep there's a natural kind of
pull towards that direction because it's
like what can I do as one person
now there's currently nothing
destructive happening with autonomous
weapon systems so we're in like in the
early days of this race that in 10 20
years might become a real problem now
where the discussion we're having now
we're now facing the result of that in
the space of viruses uh like for many
years avoiding the conversations here
I don't know what to do that in the
early days
um but I think we'll have to I guess
great institutions where people can
stand out
people can stand out and like basically
be individual thinkers and break out
into all kinds of spaces of ideas that
allow us to think freely freedom of
thought and maybe that requires a
decentralization of Institutions well
years ago I came up with a concept
called cultivated insecurity
and the idea is let's just take the
example of the average Joe right the
average Joe has a job somewhere and
their mortgage their medical insurance
their retirement their connection with
the economy is to one degree or another
dependent on their relationship with the
employer
that means that there is a strong
incentive especially in any industry
where it's not easy to move from one
employer to the next there's a strong
incentive to stay in your employer's
good graces right so it creates a very
top-down Dynamic not only in terms of
who gets to tell uh other people what to
do but it really comes down to who gets
to tell other people how to think
so that's extremely dangerous
the way out of it is to cultivate
security to the extent that somebody is
in a position to go against the grain
and have it not be a catastrophe for
their family and their ability to earn
you will see that behavior a lot more so
I would argue that some of what you're
talking about is just a simple
predictable consequence of the
concentration of the uh the sources of
well-being
and that this is a solvable problem
you got a chance to talk with Joe Rogan
yesterday yes I did and I just saw the
episode was released and uh
Ivermectin is trending on Twitter
Joe told me it was an incredible
conversation I look forward to listening
to you today many people have probably
by the time this was released I've
already listened to it
I think it would be interesting to
discuss
uh a postmortem how do you feel how that
conversation went and maybe broadly
how do you see the story as it's
unfolding of ivermectin from the origins
from before covid-19 through 2020 to
today I very much enjoyed talking to Joe
and I'm uh
undescribably grateful that he would
take the risk of such a discussion that
he would as he described it do an
emergency podcast on the subject which I
I think that was not an exaggeration
this needed to happen
for various reasons that he uh he took
us down the road of talking about the
censorship campaign against Ivermectin
which I find utterly shocking and
talking about the drug itself and I
should say we talked uh we had Pierre
Corey available uh he came on the
podcast as well he is of course the face
of the FL Triple C the front line
covid-19 Critical Care Alliance these
are doctors who have innovated uh ways
of treating coveted patients and they
happened on Ivermectin and have been
using it and I hesitate to use the word
advocating for it because that's not
really the role of doctors or scientists
but they are advocating for it in the
sense that there is this uh pressure not
to talk about its Effectiveness for
reasons that we can go into so maybe
step back and say what is Ivermectin and
how much
Studies have been done to show its
effectiveness
so Ivermectin is an interesting drug it
was discovered in the 70s by a Japanese
scientist named Satoshi omura and he
found it in soil near a Japanese golf
course so I would just point out in
passing that if we were to stop
self-silencing over the possibility that
Asians will be demonized over the
possible lab leak in Wuhan and to
recognize that actually the natural
course of the story
has a likely lab leak in China it has a
unlikely hero in Japan
um the story is naturally not a simple
one but in any case uh Amura discovered
this molecule he sent it to a friend who
was at Merck a scientist named Campbell
they won a Nobel prize for the discovery
of the Ivermectin molecule in 2015. its
initial use was in treating parasitic
infections It's very effective in
treating the the worm that causes river
blindness the pathogen that causes
elephantitis scabies
it's a very effective anti-parasite drug
it's extremely safe it's on the whose
list of essential medications it's safe
for children it has been administered
something like 4 billion times in the
last four decades it has been given away
in the millions of doses by Merck in
Africa people have been on it for long
periods of time and in fact one of the
reasons that Africa may have had less
severe impacts from covid-19 is that
Ivermectin is widely used there to
prevent parasites and the drug appears
to have a long lasting impact so it's an
interesting molecule it was discovered
some time ago apparently
that it has antiviral properties and so
it was tested in early in the covid-19
pandemic to see if it might work to
treat humans with covid it turned out to
have very promising evidence that it did
treat humans it was tested in tissues it
was tested at a very high dosage which
confuses people they think that those of
us who believe that Ivermectin might be
useful in confronting this disease or
advocating those high doses which is not
the case
but in any case there have been quite a
number of studies
a wonderful meta-analysis was finally
released we had seen it in pre-print
version but it was finally peer-reviewed
and published this last week it reveals
that the drug as clinicians have been
telling us those who've been using it
it's highly effective at treating people
with the disease especially if you get
to them early and it showed an 86
percent Effectiveness as a prophylactic
to prevent people from Contracting covet
and that number 86 percent is high
enough to drive SARS cov2 to Extinction
if we wished to deploy it first of all
the the the meta-analysis is this the uh
ivermectin for code 19 real-time
meta-analysis of 60 studies or there's a
bunch of meta-analysis there because I I
was really impressed by the real-time
meta-analysis that keeps getting updated
the one at uh IVM meta
dot com well I saw it as uh c19 ever met
yeah
um no this is not that meta-analysis
stuff so that is as you say a living
meta-analysis where you can watch his
evidence which is super cool by the way
it's really cool and they've got some
really nice Graphics that allow you to
understand well what is the evidence you
know it's concentrated around this level
of Effectiveness
Etc so anyway it's great site well worth
paying attention to no this was a
meta-analysis
um I don't know any of the authors but
one second author is Tess Laurie of the
bird group bird being a uh a group of
analysts and doctors in Britain that is
playing a role similar to the FL Triple
C here in the U.S
um so anyway this is a meta-analysis
that that uh that uh Tess Laurie and
others did of all of the available
evidence and
um it's quite compelling people if
people can look for it on my Twitter I
will I will put it up and people can
find it there so what about dose here
that
in terms of safety uh uh what do we
understand about the the kind of dust
required to to have that level of
Effectiveness and what do we understand
about it the safety of that kind of dust
so let me just say I'm not a medical
doctor I'm a biologist I'm on Ivermectin
uh in lieu of vaccination in terms of
dosage there is one reason for concern
which is that the most effective dose
for prophylaxis involves something like
weekly Administration
and that that is because that is not a
historical pattern of use for the drug
it is possible that there is some
long-term implication of being on it for
being on it weekly for a long period of
time there's not a strong indication of
that the safety signal that we have over
people using the drug over many years
and using it in high doses in fact Dr
Corey told me yesterday
that there are cases in which people
have made calculation errors and taken a
massive overdose of the drug and had no
ill effect so anyway there's lots of
reasons to think the drug is
comparatively safe but no drug is
perfectly safe
and I do worry about the long-term
implications of taking it I also think
it's very likely
um
because the drug is administered in a
dose something like let's say 15
milligrams for somebody my size once a
week after you've gone through the
initial
the initial double dose that you take 48
hours apart
it is apparent that if the amount of
drug in your system is sufficient to be
protective at the end of the week then
it was probably far too high at the
beginning of the week so there's a
question about whether or not you could
flatten out the intake so that you the
amount of ivermectin goes down
the protection remains I have little
doubt that that would be discovered if
we looked for it but that said it does
seem to be quite safe
highly effective at preventing covid the
86 percent number is plenty high enough
for us to drive uh SARS cov2 to
Extinction in light of its are not
number of slightly more than two
and so why we are not using it as a bit
of a a mystery so even if everything you
said now turns out to be not correct
it is nevertheless obvious that it's
sufficiently promising it always has
been in order to Merit rigorous
scientific exploration investigation
doing a lot of studies
and certainly not censoring the science
or the discussion of it
so before we talk about
the various vaccines for code 19. I'd
like to talk to you about censorship
given everything you're saying why did
YouTube
and other places
sensor
discussion of
um Ivermectin
well there's a question about why they
say they didn't and there's a question
about why they actually did it
now it is worth mentioning that YouTube
is part of a Consortium
it is partnered with Twitter Facebook
Reuters AP Financial Times Washington
Post some other notable organizations
and that this group has appointed itself
the Arbiter of Truth in effect they have
decided to control discussion ostensibly
to prevent the distribution of
misinformation
now how have they chosen to do that in
this case they have chosen to Simply
utilize the recommendations of The Who
and the CDC and apply them as if they
are synonymous with scientific truth
problem
even at their best The Who and CDC are
not scientific entities they are
entities that are about public health
and public health has this whether it's
right or not and I believe I disagree
with it but it has this
uh self-assigned right to lie
that comes from the fact that there is
game theory that works against for
example a successful vaccination
campaign
that if everybody else takes a vaccine
and therefore the herd becomes immune
through vaccination and you decide not
to take a vaccine then you benefit from
the immunity of the herd without having
taken the risk so people who do best are
the people who opt out that's a hazard
and The Who and CDC as public health
entities effectively
um
oversimplify stories in order that that
game theory does not cause a predictable
tragedy of the comets
with that said once that right to lie
exists
then it finds out sir it turns out to
serve the interests of for example
pharmaceutical companies which have
emergency use authorizations that
require that there not be a safe and
effective treatment and have immunity
from liability for harms caused by their
product so that's a recipe for disaster
right you don't need to be a
sophisticated uh thinker about complex
systems to see the hazard of immunizing
a company from the harm of its own
product at the same time that that
product can only exist in the market if
some other product that works better uh
somehow fails to be noticed so somehow
YouTube is doing the bidding of Merck
and others
whether it knows that that's what it's
doing I have no idea I think this may be
another case of an autopilot that thinks
it's doing the right thing because it's
parroting the corrupt wisdom of The Who
and the CDC but The Who and the CDC have
been wrong again and again in this
pandemic and the irony here is that with
YouTube coming after me well my channel
has been right where The Who and CDC
have been wrong consistently over the
whole pandemic so how is it that YouTube
is censoring us because The Who and CDC
disagree with us when in fact in past
disagreements we've been right and
they've been wrong there's so much to
talk about here so
foreign
I've heard this many times actually on
the inside of YouTube and with
colleagues that I've talked about talked
with
is they kind of in a very casual way say
their job is simply to uh slow or
prevent the spread of misinformation
and they say like that's an easy thing
to do
like to know what is true or not
is an easy thing to do and so from the
YouTube perspective I think
they basically Outsource
of of the the task of knowing what is
true or not to public institutions that
on a basic Google search claim to be the
Arbiters of Truth
so if you were YouTube who are
exceptionally profitable and
exceptionally powerful in terms of uh
controlling what people get to see or
not
what would you do would you take a stand
a public stand against the who CDC
or would you instead say you know what
let's open the dam and let any video on
anything fly
what do you what do you do here if you
say you were put if Brett Weinstein was
put in charge of YouTube for a month
in this most critical of times where
YouTube actually has incredible amounts
of power to educate the populace
uh to give power of knowledge to the
populace such that they can reform
institutions what would you do how would
you run YouTube
well unfortunately or fortunately this
is actually quite simple
the founders the American Founders
settled on a counter-intuitive
formulation
that people should be free to say
anything they should be free from the
government blocking them from doing so
they did not imagine that in formulating
that right that most of what was said
would be of high quality nor did they
imagine it would be free of harmful
things what they correctly reasoned was
that the benefit of leaving everything
so it can be said exceeds the cost which
everyone understands to be substantial
what I would say is they could not have
anticipated
the impact the centrality of platforms
like YouTube Facebook Twitter
Etc
if they had they would not have limited
the First Amendment as they did they
clearly understood that the power of the
federal government was so great
that it needed to be limited by granting
explicitly the right of citizens to say
anything
in fact
YouTube Twitter Facebook may be more
powerful In This Moment than the federal
government of their worst nightmares
could have been the power that these
entities have to control thought and to
shift civilization is so great that we
need to have those same protections it
doesn't mean that harmful things won't
be said but it means that nothing has
changed about the cost benefit analysis
of building the right to censor so if I
were running YouTube the limit of what
should be allowed is the limit of the
law right if what you are doing is legal
then it should not be YouTube's place to
limit what gets said or who gets to hear
it that is between speakers and audience
will harm come from that of course it
will but will net harm come from it no I
don't believe it will I believe that
allowing everything to be said does
allow a process in which better ideas do
come to the fore and win out so you
believe that in the end when there's
complete freedom to share ideas
that truth will win out
so what I've noticed just as a brief
side comment that certain things become
viral
irregardless of their truth
I I've noticed that things that are
dramatic
and or funny like things that become
memes
are not don't have to be grounded in
truth and so that what worries me there
is that we basically
maximize for drama versus maximize for
truth in a system where everything is
free and that's worrying in the time of
emergency
well yes it's all worrying in time of
emergency to be sure but I want you to
notice that what you've happened on is
actually an analog for a much deeper and
older problem
human beings are the
we are not a blank slate but we are the
blankest Slate that nature has ever
devised and there's a reason for that
right it's where our flexibility comes
from
we have effectively we are robots in
which the a large fraction of the
cognitive capacity has been or of the
behavioral capacity has been offloaded
to the software layer which gets written
and Rewritten over evolutionary time
that means effectively that much of what
we are in fact the important part of
what we are is housed in the in the
cultural layer and the conscious layer
and not in the hardware hard coding
layer
that layer is prone to make errors right
and anybody who's watched a child grow
up knows that children make absurd
errors all the time right that's part of
the process as we were discussing
earlier
it is also true that as you look across
a field of people discussing things a
lot of what is said is pure nonsense
it's garbage
but the tendency of garbage to emerge
and even to spread on the short term
does not say that over the long term
what sticks is not the valuable ideas so
there is a high tendency for uh novelty
to be created in the cultural space but
there's also a high tendency for it to
go extinct and you have to keep that in
mind it's not like the genome right
everything is happening at a much higher
rate if things are being created they're
being destroyed and I can't say that you
know I mean obviously we've seen
totalitarianism arise many times and
it's very destructive each time it does
so it's not like hey freedom to come up
with any idea you want hasn't produced a
whole lot of Carnage but the question is
over time
does it produce more open fairer more
decent societies and I believe that it
does I can't prove it but that does seem
to be the pattern I I believe so as well
the thing is in the short term
freedom of speech
absolute freedom of speech can be quite
destructive
but you nevertheless have to hold on to
that because in the long term
I think you and I I guess are optimistic
in the sense that good ideas will win
out
I don't know how strongly I believe that
it will work but I will say I haven't
heard a better idea
yeah
um I would also point out that there's
something very significant in this
question of the hubris involved in
imagining that you're going to improve
the discussion by censoring which is
the majority of Concepts at The Fringe
are nonsense
that's automatic but the heterodoxy at
The Fringe which is indistinguishable at
the beginning from the nonsense ideas is
the key to progress so if you decide hey
The Fringe is 99 garbage let's just get
rid of it right hey that's a strong win
we're getting rid of 99 garbage for one
percent something or other and the point
is yeah but that one percent something
rather is the key you're throwing out
the key and so that's what YouTube is
doing
frankly I think at the point that it
started censoring my channel you know in
the immediate aftermath of this major
reversal of for lab leak it should have
looked at itself and said well what the
hell are we doing who are we censoring
we're censoring somebody who was just
right
right in a conflict with the very same
people on whose behalf we are now
censoring right that should have caused
them to wake up so he said one approach
if you're on YouTube was this basically
let all videos go that do not violate
the law well I should fix that okay I
believe that that is the basic principle
Eric makes an excellent point about the
distinction between ideas and personal
attacks doxing these other things so I
agree there's no value in allowing
people to destroy each other's lives
even if there's a technical uh legal
defense for it now how you draw that
line I don't know but you know what I'm
talking about is yes people should be
free to traffic and bad ideas and they
should be free to expose that the ideas
are bad and hopefully that process
results in better ideas winning out yeah
there's an interesting line between
you know like uh ideas like the Earth is
flat which I believe you should not
censor
and then like you start to encroach on
like personal attacks it's not not you
know doxing yes but like not even
getting to that like there's a certain
point where it's like
that's no longer ideas that's more
that's somehow not productive even if
it's it feels like uh believing the
Earth is flat is somehow productive
because maybe this tiny percent chance
it is you know like it just feels like
personal attacks it doesn't
um well you know it's I'm torn on this
because
there's assholes in this world there's
fraudulent people in this world so
sometimes personal attacks are useful to
reveal that
um but there's a line you can cross like
there's a comedy where people make fun
of others I think that's amazing that's
very powerful and that's very useful
even if it's painful but then there's
like once it gets to be
um yeah there's a certain line it's a
gray area where you cross where it's no
longer in any possible World productive
and that's a really weird gray area for
YouTube to operate in and that feels
like should be a crowdsourced thing
where people vote on it but then again
do you trust the majority to vote on
what is crossing the line and not I mean
this is where
this is really interesting
on this particular like the scientific
aspect of this
do you think YouTube should take more of
a stance not censoring but
to actually have scientists within
YouTube having these kinds of
discussions and then be able to almost
speak out in a transparent way this is
what we're going to let this video stand
but here's all these other opinions
almost like take a more active role in
uh its recommendation system in trying
to present a full picture to you right
now they're not they're they're the
recommender systems are not human
fine-tuned they're all based on how you
click and there's this clustering
algorithms they're not taking an active
role on giving you the full spectrum of
ideas in in the space of science they
just censor or not well at the moment
it's going to be pretty hard to compel
me that these people should be trusted
with any sort of curation or comment on
matters of evidence because they have
demonstrated that they are incapable of
doing it well
um you could make such an argument and I
guess I'm open to the idea of
Institutions that would look something
like YouTube that would be capable of
offering something valuable I mean and
you know even just the fact of them
literally curating things and putting
some videos next to others you know
implies something so yeah there's a
question to be answered but at the
moment no at the moment what it is doing
is quite literally putting not only
individual humans in tremendous Jeopardy
by censoring discussion of useful tools
and making tools that are more hazardous
than has been acknowledged seem safe
right but it is also placing Humanity in
danger of a permanent relationship with
this pathogen I cannot emphasize enough
how expensive that is it's effectively
incalculable if the relationship becomes
permanent the number of people who will
ultimately suffer and die from it is
indefinitely large yeah there's uh
currently the algorithm is very Rabbit
Hole driven meaning if you uh if you
click on the Flat Earth videos it'll
that's all you're going to be presented
with and you're not going to be nicely
presented with arguments against the
Flat Earth and the flip side of that
if you watch like quantum mechanics
videos or no general relativity videos
it's very rare you're going to get a
recommendation have you considered the
Earth as flat and I think you should
have both uh same with vaccine videos
that present the power and the
incredible
like biology genetics biology about the
vaccine you're rarely going to get
videos
from
well-respected scientific Minds
presenting possible dangers with vaccine
and the vice versa is true as well which
is if you're looking at the danger of
the vaccine on YouTube you're not going
to get the highest quality of videos
recommended to you and I'm not talking
about like manually inserted CDC videos
that are like the most untrustworthy
things you can possibly watch about how
everybody should take the vaccine is the
safest thing ever no it's about
incredible again MIT colleagues of mine
incredible biologists biologists that I
talk about the the details of how the
MRNA vaccines work and all those kinds
of things I think maybe this is me with
the AI hat on is I think the algorithm
can fix a lot of this and YouTube should
build better algorithms and trust that
to and a couple of complete freedom of
speech
to expand the what people are able to
think about present always varied views
not balanced in some artificial way
hard-coded way but balanced in a way
that's crowdsourced I think that's an
algorithm problem that could be solved
because then you can delegate it to the
algorithm as opposed to this hard code
censorship of basically
uh creating artificial boundaries on
what can and can't be discussed instead
creating a full spectrum of exploration
that can be done and trusting the
intelligence of people to do the
exploration
well there's there's a lot there I would
say we have to keep in mind that we're
talking about a
um a publicly held company with
shareholders and obligations to them and
that that may make it impossible and I
remember
um many years ago back in the early days
of Google
I remember a sense of Terror at the loss
of General search
right it used to be that the that Google
if you searched came up with the same
thing for everyone and then it got
personalized and for a while it was
possible to turn off the personalization
which was still not great because if
everybody else is looking at a
personalized search and you can tune
into one that isn't personalized what
are you know that doesn't tell you why
the world is sounding the way it is but
nonetheless it was at least an option
and then that vanished and the problem
is I think this is literally deranging
us
that in effect
I mean what you're describing is
Unthinkable it is Unthinkable that in
the face of a campaign to vaccine
vaccinate people in order to reach herd
immunity that
um
YouTube would give you videos on hazards
of vaccines
when this is you know how hazardous the
vaccines are is an unsettled question
why is it Unthinkable that doesn't make
any sense for from a company perspective
if intelligent people
in large amounts are open-minded and are
thinking through the the hazards and the
benefits of a vaccine a company should
should find the best videos
to present uh what people are thinking
about well let's come up with a
hypothetical okay let's come up with a
a very deadly disease for which there's
a vaccine that is very safe though not
perfectly safe
and we are then faced with YouTube
trying to figure out what to do for
somebody searching on vaccine safety
suppose it is necessary in order to
drive the pathogen to Extinction
something like smallpox that people get
on board with the vaccine
but there's a tiny Fringe of people who
thinks that the vaccine is a mind
control agent
right so should YouTube
direct people to the only claims against
this vaccine which is that it's a mind
control agent
when in fact
the vaccine is
very safe whatever that means if that
were the actual configuration of the
puzzle then YouTube would be doing
active harm pointing you to
um this other video potentially now yes
I would love to live in a world where
people are up to the challenge of
sorting that out but my basic point
would be
if it's an evidentiary question and
there is essentially no evidence that
the vaccine is a mind control agent and
there's plenty of evidence that the
vaccine is safe then well you look for
this video we're going to give you this
one puts it on a par right so for the
mind that's tracking how much uh thought
is there behind it's safe versus how
much thought is there behind it's a mind
control agent will result in
artificially elevating this now in the
current case what we've seen is not this
at all we have seen evidence obscured in
order to create a false story about
safety and we saw the inverse with
Ivermectin we saw a campaign to portray
the drug as
more dangerous and less effective than
the evidence clearly suggested it was so
we're not talking about a comparable
thing but I guess my point is the
algorithmic solution that you point to
creates a problem of its own which is
that it means that the way to get
exposure is to generate something fringy
if you're the only thing on some Fringe
then suddenly YouTube would be
recommending those things and that's
that's obviously a gamable system at
best yeah but the solution to that I
know you're you're creating a thought
experiment maybe playing a little bit of
a devil's advocate
I think the solution to that is not to
limit the algorithm in the case of the
super deadly virus it's for the
scientists to step up and become better
communicators more charismatic is is
fight the Battle of ideas sort of create
better videos you know the like if the
virus is truly deadly you have a lot
more ammunition a lot more data a lot
more material to work with in terms of
communicating with the public it's so be
better at communicating and stop being
uh you have to start trusting the
intelligence of people and also being
transparent and playing the game of the
internet which is like what is the
internet hungry for I believe
authenticity
stop looking like you're full of shit
that's the scientific Community if
there's any flaw that I currently see
especially the people that are in public
office that like Anthony fauci they look
like they're full of shit and I know
they're brilliant why don't they look
more authentic so they're losing that
game and I think a lot of people observe
in this entire system now younger
scientists are seeing this
and saying okay if I want to continue
being a scientist in the public eye and
I want to be effective on my job I'm
going to have to be a lot more authentic
so they're learning the lesson this
evolutionary system is working uh so is
there's just a younger generation of
Minds coming up that I think will do a
much better job in this battle of ideas
that when the when the much more
dangerous virus comes along they'll be
able to be better communicators at least
that's the hope the the using the
algorithm to control that is uh I feel
like is a big problem so you're going to
have the same problem with a deadly
virus as with the current virus if you
let YouTube draw hard Lines by the pr
and the marketing people versus the
broad community of scientists
well in some sense you're you're uh
suggesting something that's close kin to
what I was saying about you know freedom
of expression ultimately provides an
advantage to to better ideas so I'm in
agreement broadly speaking
um but I would also say there's probably
some sort of you know let's imagine the
world that you propose where YouTube
shows you the alternative point of view
that has the problem that I suggest but
one thing you could do is you could give
us the tools to understand what we're
looking at
right you could give us so first of all
there's something
I think myopic solipsistic narcissistic
about a an algorithm that serves
shareholders by showing you what you
want to see rather than what you need to
know right that's the distinction is
flattering you you know playing to your
blind spot is something that algorithm
will figure out but it's not healthy for
us all to have Google playing to our
blind spot it's very very dangerous so
what I really want is analytics that
allow me or maybe options and analytics
the options should allow me to see what
alternative perspectives are being
explored right so here's the thing I'm
searching and it leads me down this road
right let's let's say it's Ivermectin
okay I find all of this evidence that
Ivermectin works I find all of these
discussions and people talk about
various protocols and this and that and
then I could say all right what is the
other side and I could see
who is searching not as individuals but
what demographics are searching
Alternatives and maybe you could even
combine it with something Reddit like
where
effectively let's say that there was a
position that uh
I don't know that that a vaccine is a
mind control device and you could have a
steel man this argument
uh competition effectively and the
better answers that steel man it as well
as possible would rise to the top and so
you could read the top three or four
explanations about why this really
credibly is a mind control uh product
and you can say well that doesn't really
add up I can check these three things
myself and they can't possibly be right
right you could dismiss it and then as
an argument that was credible let's say
plate tectonics before that was an
accepted concept
you'd say wait a minute
there is evidence for plate tectonia as
crazy as it sounds that the continents
are floating around on liquid actually
that's not so implausible you know we've
got these subduction zones we've got a
geology that is compatible we've got
puzzle piece continents that seem to fit
together wow that's a surprising amount
of evidence for that position so I'm
going to file some Bayesian probability
with it that's updated for the fact that
actually the Steel Man argument's better
than I was expecting right so I could
imagine something like that where a I
would love the search to be indifferent
to who's searching right the the
solipsistic thing is too dangerous so
the search could be General so we would
all get a sense for what everybody else
was seeing too
and then some layer that didn't have
anything to do with what YouTube points
you to or not but allowed you to see you
know the general pattern of uh adherence
to searching for
um information and again a layer in
which those things could be defended so
you could hear what a good argument
sounded right like rather than just hear
a caricatured argument yeah and also
reward people creators that have
demonstrated like a track record of
open-mindedness and correctness
correctness as much as it could be
measured over a long term and sort of
uh I mean
a lot of this maps to
incentivizing good long-term Behavior
not immediate kind of dopamine Rush uh
kind of uh signals
I think ultimately the algorithm
on the individual level
should optimize for personal growth
long-term happiness
just growth intellectually growth in
terms of Lifestyle personally and so on
as opposed to immediate I think that's
going to build a better Society not even
just like truth because I think truth is
a complicated thing it's more just you
growing as a person uh exploring the
space of ideas changing your mind often
increasing the level to which you're
open-minded the knowledge base you're
operating from the willingness to
empathize with others all those kinds of
things the algorithm should optimize for
that creating a better human at the
individual level that you're all I think
that's a great business model because
the person that's using this tool will
then be happier with themselves for
having used it and it'll be a lifelong
quote-unquote customer I think it's a
great business model
to make a happy open-minded
knowledgeable better human being it's a
terrible business model under the
current system
what you want is to build the system in
which it is a great business model why
is a terrible model because it will be
decimated by those who play to the short
term
I don't think so why well I mean I think
we're living it we're living it well no
because if if you have the alternative
that presents itself it it points out
the emperor Emperor has no clothes I
mean it points out that YouTube is
operating in this way Twitter's
operating in this way so Facebook is
operating in this way how long term
would you like the wisdom to to prove
out
well it even a week is better what's
currently happening right but the
problem is you know if a week loses out
to an hour right and I don't think it
loses out it loses out in the short term
that's my point at least you're a great
communicator and you basically say look
here's the metrics and a lot of it's
like how people actually feel
like this this is what people experience
with social media
they look back at the previous month and
say
I felt shitty in a lot of days because
of social media right like if you look
back at the previous few weeks and say
wow I'm a better person because that
month happened that's they immediately
choose the product that's going to lead
to that that's what love for products
looks like if you if you love like a lot
of people love their Tesla car like
that's or iPhone or like beautiful
design that's what love looks like you
look back I'm a better person for having
used this thing well you got to ask
yourself the question now if this is
such a great business model why isn't it
devolving
why don't we see it uh honestly it's
competence it's like people are just
it's not it's not easy to build new it's
not easy to build products tools systems
on new ideas it's kind of a new idea
we've gone through this everything we're
seeing now
comes from the ideas of the initial
birth of the internet and there just
needs to be new sets of tools that are
incentivizing long-term personal growth
and happiness that's it right but but
what we have is a market that doesn't
favor this right I mean for one thing
you know we had an alternative to
Facebook right that looked you know you
owned your own data it wasn't
exploitative
and Facebook bought a huge interest in
it and it died I mean who do you know
who's on diaspora the execution there
was not good right but it could have
gotten better
right I don't think that the argument
that why hasn't somebody done it a good
argument for it's not going to
completely destroy all of Twitter and
Facebook when somebody does it or
Twitter will catch up and pivot to to
the algorithm this is not what this is
not what I'm saying there's obviously
great ideas that remain unexplored
because nobody has gotten to the
foothill that would allow you to explore
them that's true but you know an
Internet that was non-predatory is an
obvious idea and many of us know that we
want it and many of us have seen
prototypes of it and we don't move
because there's no audience there so the
network effects cause you to stay with
the predatory internet
um but let me just I wasn't kidding
about build the system in which your
idea is a great business plan
um so in our upcoming book Heather and I
in our last chapter explore something
called the fourth Frontier and fourth
Frontier has to do with sort of a 2.0
version of civilization which we freely
admit we can't tell you very much about
it's something that would have to be we
would have to prototype our way there we
would have to effectively navigate our
way there but the result would be very
much like what you're describing it
would be something that effectively
liberates humans meaningfully and most
importantly it has to feel like growth
without depending on growth in other
words human beings are creatures that
like every other creature
is effectively looking for growth right
we are looking for under exploited or
unexploited opportunities and when we
find them our ancestors for example if
they happen into a new Valley that was
unexplored by people their population
would grow until it hit carrying
capacity so there would be this great
feeling of there's abundance until you
hit carrying capacity which is
inevitable and then zero-sum Dynamics
would set in so in order for human
beings to flourish long term the way to
get there is to satisfy the desire for
growth without hooking it to actual
growth which only moves and fits and
starts and this is actually I believe
the key
to avoiding these you know spasms of
human tragedy when in the absence of
growth people do uh something that
causes their population to experience
growth which is they go and make war on
or commit genocide against some other
population which is something we
obviously have to stop
by the way this is uh a
hunter-gatherer's guide to the 21st
century co-authored that's right dear
wife Heather being released this
September I believe you said you're
going to do a little bit of a preview
videos on each chapter leading up to the
release so I'm looking forward to the
last chapter the as well as well as all
the the previous one I have a few
questions on that so you you have um you
generally have faith to clarify that
technology could be the thing that
empowers this kind of future
well if you just let technology evolve
it's going to be our undoing right one
of the things that I
um fault my libertarian friends for is
this faith that the market is going to
find Solutions without destroying us and
my sense is I'm a very strong believer
in markets right I believe in their
power even above some Market
fundamentalists but what I don't believe
is that they should be allowed to plot
our course right markets are very good
at figuring out how to do things they
are not good at all about figuring out
what we should do right what we should
want we have to tell markets what we
want and then they can tell us how to do
it best and if we adopted that kind of
pro-market but in a context where it's
not steering where human well-being is
actually the driver
we can do remarkable things and the
technology that emerges would naturally
be enhancing of human well-being
perfectly so no but overwhelmingly so
but at the moment markets are finding
our every defective character and
exploiting them and making huge profits
and making us worse to each other in the
process
before we leave covid-19 let me
ask you about a very difficult topic
which is the vaccines
um
so I took the Pfizer vaccine the two
shots
you did not
you have been taking
Ivermectin yep
so one of the arguments against the
discussion of ivermectin is that
it prevents people from being fully
willing to get the vaccine
how would you compare Ivermectin
and the vaccine for coven 19.
all right that's a good question I would
say first of all there are some hazards
with the vaccine that people need to be
aware of there are some things that we
cannot rule out and for which
there is some evidence the two that I
think people should be tracking is the
possibility some would say a likelihood
that a vaccine of this nature
that is to say very narrowly focused on
a single antigen
is a an evolutionary pressure that will
drive the emergence of variants that
will escape the protection that comes
from the vaccine
so this is a hazard
it is a particular hazard in light of
the fact that these vaccines have a
substantial number of breakthrough cases
so one danger is that a person who has
been vaccinated will shed viruses that
are specifically
um less visible or invisible to the
immunity created by the vaccines
so we may be creating the next pandemic
by applying the pressure of vaccines at
a point that it doesn't make sense to
um the other danger has to do with
something called antibody dependent
enhancement
which is something that we see in
certain diseases like Dengue Fever you
may know that Dengue one gets a case and
then their second case is much more
devastating so break bone fever is when
you get your second case of dengue and
Dengue effectively utilizes the immune
response that is produced by prior
exposure to attack the body in ways that
it is incapable of doing before exposure
so this is apparently this pattern has
apparently blocked past efforts to make
vaccines against coronaviruses
whether it will happen here or not it is
still too early to say but before we
even get to the question of harm done to
individuals by these vaccines we have to
ask about what the overall impact is
going to be and it's not clear in the
way people think it is that if we
vaccinate enough people the pandemic
will end it could be that we vaccinate
people and make the pandemic worse and
while nobody can say for sure that
that's where we're headed it is at least
something to be aware of so don't
vaccines usually create that kind of uh
evolutionary pressure to create deadlier
different strains of the virus
so isn't so is there something
particular with these mRNA vaccines
that's uniquely dangerous in this regard
well it's not even just the MRNA
vaccines the MRNA vaccines and the
adenovector DNA vaccine all share the
same vulnerability which is they are
very narrowly focused on one subunit of
the spike protein
so that is a very concentrated
evolutionary signal
we are also deploying it in mid pandemic
and it takes time for immunity to
develop so part of the problem here if
you if you inoculated a population
before encounter with a pathogen then
there might be substantially enough
immunity to prevent this phenomenon from
happening but in this case
we are inoculating people as they are
encountering those who are sick with the
disease and what that means is the
disease is now faced with a lot of
opportunities to effectively
evolutionarily practice Escape
strategies so one thing is the timing
the other thing is the narrow Focus now
in a traditional vaccine you would
typically not have one antigen right you
would have basically a virus full of
antigens and the immune system would
therefore produce a broader response so
that is the case for people who have had
covet right they have an immunity that
is broader because it wasn't so focused
on one part of the spike protein
so anyway there is something unique here
so these platforms create that special
Hazard they also have components that we
haven't used before in people so for
example the lipid nanoparticles that
coat the rnas are Distributing
themselves around the body in a way that
will have unknown consequences
um so anyway there's there's reason
reason for concern is it possible for
you to steal men
the argument that everybody should get
vaccinated
of course the argument that everybody
should get vaccinated is that nothing is
perfectly safe
phase three trials showed good safety
for the vaccines now that may or may not
be actually true but what we saw
suggested High degree of efficacy and a
high degree of safety for the vaccines
that inoculating people quickly and
therefore dropping the landscape of
available victims for the pathogen to a
very low number so that herd immunity
drives it to Extinction requires us all
to take our share of the risk
and that um
that because driving into Extinction
should be our highest priority that
really people shouldn't think uh too
much about the various nuances because
overwhelmingly fewer people will die if
the population is vaccinated from the
vaccine then will die from covet if
they're not vaccinated and with the
vaccine as acryl is being deployed that
is a quite a likely scenario
that
uh
everything you know the virus will fade
away
in in the following sense that the the
the probability that a more dangerous
strain will be created
is non-zero but it's not 50 it's
something smaller and so Mo the most
likely well I don't know maybe you
disagree with that but the the scenario
we're most likely to see not that the
vaccine is here is that the fire the
effects of the virus will fade away
first of all I don't believe that the
probability of creating a worse pandemic
is low enough to Discount I think the
probability is fairly high and frankly
we are seeing a wave of variance that um
we will have to do a careful analysis to
figure out what exactly that has to do
with campaigns of vaccination where they
have been where they haven't been where
the variants emerged from but I believe
that what we are seeing is a disturbing
pattern that reflects that uh those who
were advising caution May well have been
right the data here by the way and small
tangent is terrible terrible right and
why is it terrible is another question
right this is where I start getting
angry yeah it's like there's an obvious
opportunity for an exceptionally good
data
for exceptionally rigorous like even the
suffer like the website for
self-reporting side effects for not side
effects but negative effects Adverse
Events Adverse Events sorry for the
vaccine
like there's many things I could say
from both the study perspective but
mostly let me just put on my hat
of like HTML and like web design
like it's like the worst website it
makes it so unpleasant to report it
makes it so unclear what you're
reporting if somebody actually has
serious effect like if you have very
mild effects what are the incentives for
you to even use that crappy website with
many pages and forms that don't make any
sense if you have adverse effects what
are the incentives for you to use that
website what is the trust that you have
that this information will be used well
all those kinds of things and the data
about who's getting vaccinated
anonymized data about who's getting
vaccinated where when with that with
what vaccine coupled with the adverse
effects all of that we should be
collecting instead we're completely not
we're doing it in a crappy way and using
that crappy data to make conclusions
that you then twist you're basically
collecting in a way that can uh arrive
at whatever conclusions you what and the
data is being collected by the
institutions by governments and so
therefore it's obviously they're going
to try to construct any kind of
narratives they want based on this
crappy data reminds me of much of
psychology the field that I love but is
flawed and many fundamental ways so rent
over but uh coupled with the dangers
that you're speaking to we don't have
even the data to um to understand the
dangers
yeah uh I'm gonna pick up on your rant
and say we estimates of the degree of
Under reporting invers are uh that it is
10 of the real
is the system for reporting Adverse
Events so
um in the U.S we have
above 5
000 unexpected deaths that seem in time
to be associated with vaccination
that is an undercount almost certainly
and by uh a large Factor
we don't know how large I've seen
estimates 25
000 dead in the us alone now you can
make the argument that okay that's a
large number but the necessity of
immunizing the population to drive as
far as cov2 to Extinction is such that
it's an acceptable number but I would
point out that that actually does not
make any sense and the reason it doesn't
make any sense is actually there's
several reasons one
if that was really your point that yes
many many people are going to die but
many more will die if we don't do this
um were that your approach you would not
be inoculating people who had had
covid-19 which is a large population
there's no reason to expose those people
to Danger their risk of Adverse Events
in the case that they have them is
greater so there's no reason that we
would be allowing those people to face a
risk of death if this was really about
an acceptable number of deaths arising
out of this the set of vaccines
I would also point out there's something
incredibly bizarre and I would I
struggle to find language that is strong
enough uh for the horror of vaccinating
children in this case because children
suffer a greater risk of long-term
effects because they are going to live
longer and because this is earlier in
their development therefore it impacts
systems that are still forming they
tolerate covid well and so the benefit
to them is very small and so the only
argument
for doing this is that they may
cryptically be carrying more covert than
we think and therefore they may be
integral to the way the virus spreads
the population but if that's the reason
that we are inoculating children and
there has been some Revision in the last
day or two about the recommendation on
this because of the Adverse Events that
have shown up in children but to the
extent that we were vaccinating children
we were doing it
to protect old infirm people who are the
most likely to succumb to covet 19. what
Society puts children in danger Rob's
children of life to save old infirm
people that's upside down
so there's something about the way we
are going about
vaccinating who we are vaccinating what
dangers we are pretending don't exist
that suggests that to some set of people
vaccinating people is a good in and of
itself that that is the objective of the
exercise not hurt immunity and the last
thing I'm sorry I don't want to prevent
you from jumping in here but the second
reason in addition to the fact that
we're exposing people to Danger that we
should not be exposing them to by the
way it's a tiny tangent another huge
part of the soup that should have been
part of it that's an incredible solution
is large-scale testing
but that that might be another couple
hour ago but
conversation but there's these solutions
that are obvious that were available
from the very beginning so you could
argue that Iver acting is not that
obvious but maybe the whole point is you
have aggressive very fast research that
leads to a meta-analysis and then
large-scale production and deployment
okay
at least that possibility should be
seriously considered coupled with a
serious consideration of large-scale
deployment of testing at home testing
that could have uh accelerated the the
the speed at which we reached that
herd immunity
but I don't even want to well let me
just say I am also completely shocked
that we did not get on high quality
testing early and that we are still
suffering
from this even now because just the
simple ability to track where the virus
moves between people would tell us a lot
about its mode of transmission which
would allow us to protect ourselves
better instead that information was hard
one and for no good reason so I also
find this mysterious
you've spoken with Eric
Weinstein your brother and his podcast
the portal about the uh ideas that
eventually led to the paper you
published titled the reserved capacity
hypothesis
I think first
can you
um explain this paper
and the ideas that led up to it
sure easier to explain the conclusion of
the paper
there's a question about why a creature
that can replace it cells with new cells
grows feeble and inefficient with age we
call that process which is otherwise
called Aging we call it senescence
and senescence in this paper it is
hypothesized is the unavoidable downside
of a cancer prevention
feature of our bodies that each cell has
a limit on the number of times it can
divide there are a few cells in the body
that are exceptional but most of our
cells can only divide a limited number
of times that's called the hayflick
limit
and the hayflick limit
reduces the ability of the organism
to replace tissues it therefore results
in a failure over time of maintenance
and repair and that explains why we we
become decrepit as we grow old
the question was why would that be
especially in light of the fact that the
mechanism that seems to limit the
ability of cells to reproduce is
something called a telomere telomere is
a it's a not a gene but it's a DNA
sequence at the ends of our chromosomes
that is just simply repetitive and the
number of repeats functions like a
counter
so there's a number of repeats that you
have uh after development is finished
and then each time the cell divides a
little bit of telomere is lost and at
the point that the telomere becomes
critically short the cell stops dividing
even though it still has the capacity to
do so stops dividing and it starts
transcribing different genes than it did
when it had more telomere
so
what my work did was it looked at the
fact that the telomeric shortening was
being studied by two different groups it
was being studied by people
who were interested in counteracting the
aging process and it was being studied
in exactly the opposite fashion by
people who were interested in
tumorogenesis and cancer the thought
being because it was true that when one
looked into tumors they always had
telomerase active that's the enzyme that
lengthens art telomeres so those folks
were interested
in uh bringing about a halt to the
lengthening of telomeres in order to
counteract cancer and the folks who were
studying the senescence process were
interested in lengthening telomeres in
order to generate greater repair
capacity and my point was evolutionarily
speaking this looks like a plyotropic
effect that the
genes which create the tendency of the
cells to be limited in their capacity to
replace themselves are providing a
benefit in youth which is that we are
largely free of tumors and cancer at the
inevitable late life cost that we grow
feeble and inefficient and eventually
die and that matches a very old
hypothesis in evolutionary theory by
somebody I was fortunate enough to know
George Williams one of the great 20th
century evolutionists
who argued that senescence would have to
be caused by plyotropic genes that cause
early life benefits at unavoidable late
life costs and although this isn't the
exact nature of the system he predicted
it matches what he was expecting in many
regards to a shocking degree that said
the the the the focus of the paper is
about the well let me just read the
abstract
we observed that captive rodent breeding
protocols designed this is the end of
the abstract we observed that captive
rodent breeding protocols designed to
increase reproductive output
simultaneously exert strong selection
against reproductive senescence and
virtually eliminate selection that would
otherwise favor tumor suppression this
appears to have greatly elongated the
telomeres of laboratory mice with their
telomeric Fail-Safe effectively disabled
these animals are unreliable models of
normal senescence and tumor formation so
basically using these mice is not going
to lead to the right kinds of
conclusions safety tests employing these
animals likely overestimate cancer risks
and underestimate tissue damage and
consequent accelerated senescence
so I think especially with your
discussion with Eric
the conclusion of this paper has to do
with the fact that
like we shouldn't be using these mice to
test the safety or to make conclusions
about uh uh cancer or senescence is that
the basic takeaway like basically saying
that the length of these telomeres is an
important variable to consider well
let's put it this way I think there was
a reason that the world of scientists
who was working on telomeres did not
block did not spot the plyotropic
relationship that uh was the key
argument in my paper
the reason they didn't spot it was that
there was a result that everybody knew
which seemed inconsistent
the result was that mice have very long
telomeres but they do not have very long
lives
now we can talk about what the actual
meaning of don't have very long lives is
but in the end I was confronted with a
hypothesis that would explain a great
many features of the way mammals and
indeed vertebrates age but it was
inconsistent with one result and at
first I thought maybe there's something
wrong with the result maybe this is one
of these cases where the result was
achieved once through some bad protocol
and everybody else was repeating it
didn't turn out to be the case many
Laboratories had established that mice
had Ultra long telomeres
and so I began to wonder whether or not
there was something about the breeding
protocols that generated these mice and
what that would predict is that the mice
that have long telomeres would be
laboratory mice and that wild mice would
not and Carol Grider who agreed to
collaborate with me tested that
hypothesis and showed that it was indeed
true that wild derived mice or at least
mice that had been in captivity for a
much shorter period of time did not have
Ultra long telomeres
now what this implied though
as you read is that our reading
protocols generate lengthening of
telomeres and the implication of that is
that the animals that have these very
long telomeres will be hyper prone to
create tumors they will be extremely
resistant to toxins because they have
effectively an infinite capacity to
replace any damaged tissue and so
ironically if you give one of these
Ultra long telomere lab mice a toxin if
the toxin doesn't outright kill it it
may actually increase its lifespan
because it functions as a kind of
chemotherapy
so the reason the chemotherapy works is
that dividing cells are more vulnerable
than cells that are not dividing and so
if this mouse has effectively had its
cancer protection turned off and it has
cells dividing too rapidly and you give
it a toxin you will slow down its tumors
faster than you harm its other tissues
and so you'll get a paradoxical result
that actually some drug that's toxic
seems to benefit the mouse
now I don't think that that was
understood before I published my paper
now I'm pretty sure it has to be and the
problem is that this actually is a
system
that serves pharmaceutical companies
that have the difficult job of bringing
compounds to Market many of which will
be toxic maybe all of them will be toxic
and these mice predispose our system to
declare these toxic compounds safe and
in fact I believe we've seen the errors
that result from using these mice a
number of times most famously with vioxx
which turned out to do conspicuous heart
damage why do you think this paper on
this idea has not gotten significant
traction
well
my collaborator Carol Grider said
something to me that rings in my ears to
this day she initially after she showed
that laboratory mice have anomalously
long telomeres and that wild mice don't
have long telomeres I asked her where
she was going to publish that result so
that I could cite it in my paper
and she said that she was going to keep
the result in house rather than publish
it and at the time I was a young
graduate student
I didn't really understand what she was
saying but in some sense the knowledge
that a model organism is broken in a way
that creates the likelihood that certain
results will be reliably generatable you
can publish a paper and make a big
splash with such a thing or you can
exploit the fact that you know how those
models will misbehave and other people
don't
so there's a question if somebody is
motivated cynically
and what they want to do is appear to
have deeper insight into biology because
they predict things better than others
do knowing where the flaw is so that
your predictions come out true is
advantageous at the same time
I can't help but imagine that the
pharmaceutical industry when it figured
out that the mice were predisposed to
suggest that drugs were safe
didn't leap to fix the problem because
in some sense it was the perfect cover
for the difficult job of
bringing drugs to Market and then
discovering their actual toxicity
profile right this made things look
safer than they were and I believe a lot
of profits have likely been generated
Downstream
so to kind of play Devil's Advocate it's
also possible
that this particular the length of the
telomeres is not a strong variable for
the conclusions for for the drug
development and for the conclusions that
Carol and others have been studying is
that is that is it possible for that to
be the case
that this like so one reason she and
others could be ignoring this
is because it's not a strong variable
well I don't believe so and in fact at
the point that I went to publish my
paper Carol published her result
um she did so in a way that did not make
a huge Splash did you like what would I
apologize if I don't know how
what was the emphasis of her publication
of that paper was it purely just kind of
showing data was there more because in
your paper there's a kind of more of a
philosophical statement as well
well my paper was motivated by interest
in The evolutionary Dynamics around
senescence I wasn't
um you know pursuing grants or anything
like that I was just working on a puzzle
I thought was interesting
um Carol has of course gone on to win a
Nobel Prize for her co-discovery with
Elizabeth Grider of telomerase the
enzyme that lengthens telomeres
um but anyway she's a heavy hitter in
the academic world
I don't know exactly what her purpose
was I do know that she told me she
wasn't planning to publish and I do know
that I discovered that she was in the
process of publishing very late and when
I asked her to send me the paper
to see whether or not she had put
evidence in it that the hypothesis had
come from me she grudgingly sent it to
me and my name was nowhere mentioned and
she has she broke contact at that point
um what it is that motivated her I don't
know but I don't think it can possibly
be that this result is unimportant
the fact is the reason I called her in
the first place an established contact
that generated our collaboration
was that she was a Leading Light in the
field of telomeric studies and because
of that this question about whether the
model organisms are distorting the uh
the understanding of the functioning of
telomeres is it's Central do you feel
like you you've been
as a young graduate student do you think
Carol or do you think the scientific
Community broadly screwed you over
somewhere you know I don't think of it
in those terms probably partly because
it's not productive
but you know I have a complex
relationship with this story right on
the one hand i'm livid with Carol Grider
for what she did right she absolutely
pretended that I didn't exist in this
story and I don't think I was a threat
to her my interest was as an
evolutionary biologist I had made an
evolutionary contribution
she had tested a hypothesis and frankly
I think it would have been better for
her if she had acknowledged what I had
done I think it would have enhanced her
work
um and you know I was
let's put it this way when I watched her
Nobel lecture and I should say there's
been a lot of confusion about this novel
stuff I've never said that I should have
gotten a Nobel Prize people have
misportrayed that
um my in listening to her lecture
I had one of the most bizarre emotional
experiences of my life because she
presented the work that resulted from my
hypothesis she presented it as she had
in her paper with no acknowledgment of
where it had come from and she had
in fact portrayed the Distortion of the
telomeres as if it were a lucky fact
because it allowed testing hypotheses
that would otherwise not be testable
you have to understand as a young
scientist
to watch work that you have done
presented in what's surely the most
important lecture of her career right
it's thrilling it was thrilling to see
you know her uh her figures projected on
the screen there right to have been part
of work that was important enough for
that felt great and of course to be
erased from the story felt absolutely
terrible
um so anyway that's sort of where I am
with it my sense is
um I what I'm really troubled by in this
story is the fact
that
as far as I know the flaw with the mice
has not been addressed
and actually Eric did some looking into
this he tried to establish by calling
the Jack's lab and trying to ascertain
what had happened with the colonies
whether any change in protocol had
occurred and he couldn't get anywhere
there was seemingly no awareness that it
was even an issue
so
I'm very troubled by the fact that as a
father for example
I'm in no position to protect my family
from the hazard that I believe lurks in
our medicine cabinets right I'm even
though I'm aware of where the hazard
comes from it doesn't tell me anything
useful about which of these drugs will
turn out to do damage if it is
ultimately tested and that's a very
frustrating position to be in on the
other hand you know there's a part of me
that's even still grateful to Carol for
taking my call she didn't have to take
my call and talk to some young graduate
student who had some evolutionary idea
that wasn't you know in her wheelhouse
specifically and yet she did and you
know for a while she was a good
collaborator so well can I
and have to proceed carefully here
because it's it's a complicated topic
um
so she took the call
and you kind of
you're kind of saying that
she basically
erased credit you know pretending you
didn't exist in some kind of in a
certain sense
let me phrase it this way I've um as a
as a research scientist at MIT I've had
and especially just part of
a large set of collaborations I've had a
lot of students come to me
and talk to me about ideas perhaps less
interesting than what we're discussing
here in the space of AI
that I've been thinking about anyway
it's in in general with everything I'm
doing with robotics
people
uh will have told me a bunch of ideas
that I'm already thinking about the
point is taking that idea
see this is different because the idea
has more power in the space that we're
talking about here in robotics is like
your idea means shit until you build it
like so the engineering world is a
little different but it there's a kind
of sense that I probably forgot a lot of
brilliant ideas have been told to me
do you think she pretended you don't
exist do you think she was so busy
that she kind of forgot you know that
she has like the stream of brilliant
people around her there's a bunch of
ideas that are swimming in the air and
you just kind of forget people that are
a little bit on the periphery on the
idea generation like or is it some mix
of both
uh it's not a mix of both
um I know that because we corresponded
she put a graduate student on this work
he emailed me excitedly when the results
came in
um so there was no ambiguity about what
had happened what's more when I went to
publish my work I actually sent it to
Carol in order to get her feedback
because I wanted to be a good
collaborator to her and she absolutely
panned it made many critiques that were
not valid but it was clear at that point
that he became an antagonist and none of
this adds up she couldn't possibly have
forgotten the conversation
um
I believe I even Center tissues at some
point in in part in not related to this
project but as a favor she was doing
another project that involved telomeres
and she needed samples that I could get
a hold of because of the Museum of
zoology that I was in
so this was not a one-off conversation I
certainly know that those sorts of
things can happen but that's not what
happened here this was a relationship
that existed and then was suddenly cut
short at the point that she published
her paper by surprise without saying
where the hypothesis had come from and
uh began to be a opposing Force to my
work
is there there's a bunch of trajectories
you could have taken through life
do you think about
the trajectory of being
um a researcher of then going to to war
in the space of ideas of publishing
further papers along this line
I mean that's often the dynamic of the
that fascinating space is you have a
junior researcher with brilliant ideas
and a senior researcher that that starts
out as a mentor that becomes a
competitor I mean that that happens but
then the way
to uh it's almost an opportunity to
shine is to publish a bunch more papers
in this place like to tear it apart to
dig into like really uh make it a war of
ideas did you consider that possible
trajectory I did
a couple things to say about it one this
work was not Central for me I took a
year on the telomere project because
something fascinating occurred to me and
I pursued it and the more I pursued it
the clearer it was there was something
there but it wasn't the focus of my
graduate work and I didn't want to
become a telomere researcher what I want
to do is to be an evolutionary biologist
who upgrades the toolkit of evolutionary
Concepts so that we can see more clearly
how organisms function and why and
telomeres was a proof of concept right
that paper was a proof of concept that
the toolkit in question works
um
as for the need to pursue it further
I think it's kind of absurd and you're
not the first person to say maybe that
was the way to go about it but the basic
point is look the work was good the it
turned out to be highly predictive
frankly the model of senescence that I
presented is now widely accepted and I
don't feel any misgivings at all about
having spent a year on it said my piece
and moved on to other things which
frankly I think are bigger I think
there's a lot of good to be done and it
would be it would be a waste to get
overly narrowly focused I mean there's
so many ways through the space of
Science and the the most common ways to
just publish a lot let's publish a lot
of papers do these incremental work and
exploring the space kind of like ants
looking for food is you're tossing out a
bunch of different ideas some of them
could be brilliant breakthrough ideas
nature some of them are more confidence
kind of Publications all those kinds of
things did you consider that kind of
path and science
of course I considered it but I must say
the experience of having my first
encounter with the process of peer
review be this story which was frankly a
debacle from one end to the other with
respect to the process of publishing
it did not it was not a very good sales
pitch for trying to make a difference
through publication and I would point
out part of what I ran into and I think
frankly part of what explains Carol's
behavior is that in some parts of
science there is this Dynamic where pis
parasitize their underlings and if
you're very very good you rise to the
level where one day instead of being
parasitized you get to parasitize others
now I find that scientifically
despicable
and it wasn't the culture of the lab I
grew up in at all my lab in fact the pi
Dick Alexander who's now gone but who
was an incredible mind and a great human
being he didn't want his graduate
students working on the same topics he
was on not because it wouldn't have been
useful and exciting but because
in effect he did not want any confusion
about who had done what because he was a
great mentor and the idea was actually
a great mentor is not stealing ideas and
you and you don't want you don't want
people thinking that they are so anyway
my point would be
um I wasn't up for being parasitized I
don't like the idea that if you are very
good you get parasitized until it's your
turn to parasitize others that doesn't
make sense to me
um a you know crossing over from
Evolution into cellular biology may have
exposed me to that that may have been
par for the course but it doesn't make
it acceptable and I would also point out
that my work falls in the realm of
synthesis
my work generally takes evidence
accumulated by others and places it
together in order to generate hypotheses
that explain sets of phenomena that are
otherwise intractable and I am not sure
that that is best done with narrow
Publications that are read by few and in
fact I would point to the very
conspicuous example of Richard Dawkins
who I must say have learned a tremendous
amount from and I greatly admire
Dawkins has almost no publication record
in the sense of peer-reviewed papers in
journals what he's done instead is done
synthetic work and he's published it in
books which are not appear reviewed in
the same sense and frankly I think
there's no doubting his contribution to
the field so my sense is if Richard
Dawkins
can illustrate that one can make
contributions to the field without
using journals as the primary mechanism
for Distributing what you've come to
understand then it's obviously a valid
mechanism and it's a far better one from
the point of view of accomplishing what
I want to accomplish yeah it's really
interesting there's of course several
levels you can do the kind of synthesis
and that does require a lot of both
Broad and deep thinking is exceptionally
valuable you could also public I'm
working on something with Andrew
huberman now you can also publish
synthesis sure that's like review papers
that are exceptionally valuable for the
communities it brings the community
together it tells the history tells a
story where the community has been it
paints a picture of where the path lays
for the future I think it's really
valuable and Richard Dawkins is a good
example of somebody that does that in
book form
that he kind of walks the line really
interestingly
you have like somebody who like Neil
deGrasse Tyson who's more like a science
Communicator Richard Dawkins sometimes a
science communicator but he gets he gets
like close to the technical to where
it's a little bit it's not shying away
from
being really a contribution to science
no he's made he's made real
contributions
um in book form yes yeah it really is
fascinating I mean I mean uh Roger
penins some similar kind of idea that's
interesting that's interesting synthesis
does not especially synthesis work
work that synthesizes ideas
does not necessarily need to be peer
reviewed it it it's peer-reviewed by
peers reading it well and reviewing it
that's it it is reviewed by peers which
is not synonymous with peer review and
that's the thing is people don't
understand that the two things aren't
the same right peer review is an
anonymous process that happens before
publication
in a place where there is a power
Dynamic right I mean the joke of course
is that peer review is actually peer
preview right your biggest competitors
get to see your work before it sees the
light of day and decide whether or not
it gets published and
you know again when your formative
experience with the publication
apparatus is the one I had with the
telomere paper
there's no way that that seems like the
right way to advance important ideas
yeah and you know what's the harm
in publishing them so that your peers
have to review them in public where they
actually if they're gonna disagree with
you they actually have to take the risk
of saying I don't think this is right
and here's why right with their name on
it I'd much rather that it's not that I
don't want my work reviewed by peers but
I want it done in the open you know for
the same reason you don't meet with
dangerous people in private you meet at
the cafe I want the work reviewed out in
public
he asked you a difficult question sure
there is popularity in martyrdom
this popularity in pointing out that the
emperor has no clothes
that that can become a drug in itself
I've confronted this in scientific work
I've done in MIT
where there are certain things that are
not done well people are not being the
best version of themselves
and
particular aspects of a particular field
are in need of a revolution
and part of me wanted to point that out
versus doing the hard work of publishing
papers and doing the revolution
basically just pointing out look
you guys are doing it wrong and then
just walking away
are you aware of the drug of martyrdom
of uh
the
the ego involvement
that it can Cloud your thinking
probably one of the best questions I've
ever been asked
um so let me let me try to sort it out
first of all we are all Mysteries to
ourself at some level so it's possible
there's stuff going on in me that I'm
not aware of that's driving but in
general I would say one of my better
strengths
is that I'm not especially ego driven
I have an ego I clearly think highly of
myself but it is not driving me I do not
crave that kind of validation I do crave
certain things I do love a good Eureka
moment there is something great about it
and there's something even better about
the phone calls you make next when you
share it right it's pretty it's pretty
fun right I really like it
I also really like my subject right
there's something about a walk in the
forest when you have a tool kit in which
you can actually look at creatures and
see something deep right I like it that
drives me
um and I could entertain myself for the
rest of my life right if I
if I was somehow isolated from the rest
of the world but I was in a place that
was biologically interesting you know
hopefully I would be with people that I
love and pets that I love believe it or
not but you know if I were in that
situation and I could just go out every
day and look at cool stuff and figure
out what it means I could be all right
with that so I'm not heavily driven by
the
um
the ego thing as you put it so I I I'm
completely the same except instead of
the pets I would put robots but so it's
not it's the Eureka it's the exploration
of
of the subject that brings you Joy and
fulfillment it's not the ego
well there's there's more to say no I
really don't think it's the ego thing
um I will say I also have kind of a
secondary passion for robot stuff I've
never made anything useful but I do
believe I believe I found my calling but
if this wasn't my calling my calling
would have been inventing stuff I really
I really enjoy that too so I get what
you're saying about the analogy quite
quite well
um as far as the martyrdom thing
I
I understand the drug you're talking
about and I've seen it more than I felt
it
I do if I'm just to be completely candid
and that this question is so good it
deserves a candid answer
I do like the fight
right I like fighting against people I
don't respect and I like winning
but
I have no interest in martyrdom
one of the reasons I have no interest in
martyrdom is that I'm having too good A
Time right I very much enjoy my life and
it's such a good answer I have a
wonderful wife I have amazing children I
live in a lovely place
I don't want to exit any quicker than I
have to that said I also believe in
things and a willingness to exit if
that's the only way is not exactly
inviting martyrdom but it is an
acceptance that fighting is dangerous
and going up against powerful forces
means who knows what will come of it
right I don't have the sense that the
thing is out there that used to kill
inconvenient people I don't think that's
how it's done anymore it's primarily
done through destroying them
reputationally which is not something I
relish the possibility of but there's a
difference between a
willingness to face the hazard rather
than a desire to face it because of the
thrill right for me the thrill is in
um fighting when I'm in the right I've I
think I feel that that is a worthwhile
way to take what I see as the
the kind of brutality that is built into
men and to channel it to something
useful right if it is not channeled into
something useful it will be channeled
into something else so a demo better be
channeled into something useful it's not
motivated by Fame and popularity those
kinds of things it's
that there you know you're just making
me realize that enjoying the fight
ing the powerful and idea that you
believe is right
is a kind of um
is a kind of optimism for the human
spirit it's like we can win this
it's almost like you're uh turning into
action into personal action this hope
for for Humanity
by saying like we can win this
uh and that makes you feel
good about
like the rest of humanity that if
there's people like me
then we're going to be okay
even if you're like your ideas might be
wrong or not but if you believe they're
right
and you're fighting the powerful Against
All Odds that we're going to be okay
that that that's if I were to project I
mean that because I enjoy the fight as
well I think that's the way I that's
what brings me joy is it's almost like
uh it's optimism
um in action
well it's a little different for me and
again I think you know I I recognize you
you're a familiar your construction is
familiar even if it isn't mine right
um for me I actually expect us not to be
okay and I'm not okay with that
but what's really important if I feel
like what I've said is I don't know of
any reason that it's too late as far as
I know we could still save humanity and
we could get to the fourth Frontier or
something akin to it
but I expect it's not to I expect us to
fuck it up right I don't like that
thought but I've looked into the abyss
and I've done my calculations and
the number of ways we could not succeed
are many and the number of ways that we
could manage to get out of this very
dangerous phase of history is small but
the thing I don't have to worry about
is that I didn't do enough right that I
was a coward that I you know prioritized
other things
at the end of the day I think I will be
able to say to myself and in fact the
thing that allows me to sleep is that
when I saw clearly what needed to be
done I tried to do it to the extent that
it was in my power and you know
if we fail as I expect us to I can't say
well geez that's on me you know and you
know frankly I regard what I just said
to you as something like a personality
defect
right I'm trying to free myself from the
sense that this is my fault on the other
hand my guess is that personality defect
is probably good for Humanity right it's
a good one for me to have it you know
the externalities of it are positive so
I don't feel too bad about it
yeah that's funny so yeah our
perspective on the world
are different but they rhyme like you
said because I I I've also looked into
the abyss and
it kind of smiled nervously back so I
have uh I have a more optimistic sense
that we're gonna win more than likely
we're going to be okay
I'm right there with you brother I'm
hoping you're right I'm expecting me to
be right but back to Eric because he had
a wonderful conversation in that
conversation he played the Big Brother
role and he was very happy about it he
was self-congratulatory bought it I mean
can you talk to
the ways in which Eric made you a better
man throughout your life
yeah hell yeah I mean for one thing you
know Eric and I are interestingly
similar in some ways and radically
different in some other ways and it you
know it's often a matter of Fascination
to people who know us both because
almost always people meet one of us
first and they sort of get used to that
thing and then they meet the other and
it throws the model into chaos but you
know I had a great Advantage which is I
came second right so although it was
kind of a pain in the ass to be born
into a world that had Eric in it because
he's a force of nature right it was also
terrifically useful because a he was a
very awesome older brother who you know
made interesting mistakes learned from
them and conveyed the wisdom of what he
had discovered and that was uh you know
I don't know who else ends up so lucky
as to have that kind of person blazing
the trail
it also probably you know my my
hypothesis for what birth order effects
are is that they're actually adaptive
right that the reason that a second born
is different than a firstborn is that
they're not born into a world with the
same niches in it right and so the thing
about Eric
is he's been completely dominant in the
realm of fundamental thinking right like
what he's fascinated by is the
fundamental of fundamentals and he's
excellent at it which meant that I was
born into a world where somebody was
becoming excellent in that and for me to
be anywhere near the fundamental of
fundamentals was going to be pointless
right I was going to be playing second
fiddle forever and I think that that
actually drove me to the other end of
the Continuum between fundamental and
emergent and so I became fascinated with
Biology and have been since I was
three years old right I think Eric drove
that and I have to thank him for it
because
you know I mean I never thought of so
Eric drives towards the fundamental and
you drive towards the emergent
the physics and the biology right
opposite ends of the Continuum and as
Eric would be quick to point out if he
was sitting here I treat the emergent
layer I seek the fundamentals in it
which is sort of an echo of Eric's style
of thinking but applied to the very far
complexity he's uh overpoweringly
argues for the importance of physics the
fundamental of the fundamental
he's not here to defend himself is there
an argument to be made against that or
biology
the emergent the study of
the thing that emerged when the
fundamental acts at the Universal at the
cosmic scale and builds the beautiful
thing that is us is much more important
like a psychology biology
the systems that we're actually
interacting with in this human world are
much more important to understand than
the low-level uh theories
of uh quantum mechanics and general
relativity
yeah I can't say that one is more
important I think there's probably a
different time scale I think
understanding the emergent layer is more
often useful but the bang for the buck
at the far fundamental layer may be much
greater so for example
the fourth Frontier
pretty sure it's going to have to be
Fusion powered I don't think anything
else will do it but once you had fusion
power assuming we didn't just dump
fusion power on the market the way we
would be likely to if it was invented
usefully tomorrow but if we had fusion
power
and we had a little bit more wisdom than
we have you could do an awful lot and
that's not going to come from
people like me who you know look at
Dynamics okay can I argue against that
please
I think the way to uh Unlock Fusion
power is through artificial intelligence
is so
I think most of the Breakthrough ideas
in the futures of science will be
developed by AI systems and I think in
order to build intelligent AI systems
you have to be a scholar of the
fundamental of the emergent
of biology of the Neuroscience of the
way the brain works of intelligence of
Consciousness and those things
at least directly don't have anything to
do with physics
well you're making me a little bit sad
because my addiction to the aha moment
thing is incompatible with you know
Outsourcing that job oh my God I don't
want to Outsource that thing today yeah
moment
um you know and actually I've seen this
happen before because some of the people
who uh trained Heather and me were
phylogenetic systematists uh Arnold
cluge in particular
and
the problem with systematics is that to
do it right when your technology is
primitive you have to be deeply embedded
in the philosophical and The Logical
right your method has to be based in the
highest level of rigor
once you can sequence genes
genes can spit so much data at you that
you can overwhelm high quality work with
just lots and lots and lots of automated
work and so in any in some sense there's
like a generation of phylogenetic
systematists who are the last of the
greats because what's replacing them as
sequencers so anyway I maybe you're
right about the AI and I guess you said
I like figuring stuff out is there
something that you disagree with aricon
they've been trying to convince them and
you've failed so far but uh you will
eventually succeed
you know that is a very long list Eric
and I have have uh tensions over certain
things that recur all the time and I'm
trying to think what would be you know
the idea in the space of Science and the
space of philosophy politics family
love robots
well all right let me I'm just going to
use your podcast to uh make a bit of
cryptic war and just say there are many
places in which I believe that I have
butted heads with Eric over the course
of decades and I have seen him move in
my direction substantially over you've
been winning he might he might win a
battle here or there but you've been
winning the war I would not say that
it's quite possible he could say the
same thing about me and in fact I know
that it's true there are places where
he's absolutely convinced me but in any
case I do believe it's at least you know
it may not be a totally even fight but
it's it's more even than some will
imagine
um but yeah we have um
you know there are things I say that
drive him nuts
right like when something you know like
you heard me talk about the um
what was it it was the autopilot that
seems to be putting a great many humans
in needless medical Jeopardy over the
covid-19 pandemic
and my feeling is we can say this almost
for sure
anytime you have the appearance of some
captured gigantic entity that is
censoring you on YouTube and you know
handing down dictates from The Who and
all of that it is sure that there will
be a certain amount of collusion right
there's going to be some embarrassing
emails in some places that are going to
reveal some shocking connections and
then there's going to be an awful lot of
emergence that didn't involve collusion
right in which people were doing their
little part of a job and something was
emerging and you never know what the
admixture is
how much are we looking at actual
collusion and how much are we looking at
an emergent process but you should
always walk in with the sense that it's
going to be a ratio and the question is
what is the ratio in this case I think
this drives Eric nuts
um because he is very focused on the
people I think he's focused on the
people who have a choice and make the
wrong one
and anyway he made a question of the
ratio as a distraction to that I think I
think he takes it almost as an offense
because it grants cover to people who
are harming others and I think I think
it offends him
uh morally
and if I had to say I would say it it
Alters his judgment on the matter
um but anyway
certainly useful just to leave open the
two possibilities and say it's a ratio
but we don't know which one
brother to brother do you love the guy
hell yeah hell yeah and you know I'd
love him if he was just my brother but
he's also awesome so I I love him and I
love him for who he is
so let me ask you about uh back to your
book Hunter gatherer's Guide to the 21st
century
I can't wait both for the book and the
videos you do on the book that's really
exciting that there's like a structured
organized way to present this
um
I kind of uh
from an evolutionary biology perspective
a guide for the future using our past at
its the fundamental of the emergent way
uh to uh present a picture of the future
let me ask you about uh something that
you know I think about a little bit in
this modern world which is monogamy
so I personally value monogamy one girl
ride or die there you go right or no
that's exactly it but that said
I'd I don't know what's the right way to
approach this but
from an evolutionary biology perspective
or from just looking at modern society
that seems to be an idea that's not
um what's the right way to put it
flourishing
it is waning it's waning
um so I suppose based on your reaction
you're also a supporter of monogamy or
the you value monogamy are you and I
just
um delusional
um what can you say about monogamy
from the context of your book from the
context of evolutionary biology from the
context of Being Human yeah I can say
that I fully believe that we are
actually enlightened and that although
monogamy is waning that it is not waning
because there is a superior system it is
waiting for predictable other reasons so
let us just say it is there's a lot of
pre-trans fallacy here where
people go through a phase where they
recognize that actually we know a lot
about the evolution of monogamy and we
can tell from the fact that humans are
somewhat sexually dimorphic
that there has been a lot of polygeny in
human history
and in fact most of human history was
largely poligenous
but it is also the case that most of the
people on Earth today belong to
civilizations that are at least
nominally monogamous and have practiced
monogamy and that's not
anti-evolutionary what that is is part
of what I mentioned before where human
beings can swap out their software
program
and different mating patterns are uh
favored in different periods of History
so I would argue that the benefit of
monogamy the primary one that drives the
evolution of monogamous patterns in
humans is that it brings all adults into
child rearing
now the reason that that matters is
because human babies are very labor
intensive in order to raise them
properly having two parents is a huge
asset and having more than two parents
having an extended family also is very
important
but what that means
is that for a population that is
expanding
a monogamous mating system makes sense
it makes sense because it means that the
number of offspring that can be raised
is elevated it's elevated because all
potential parents are involved in
parenting whereas if you sideline a
bunch of males by having a polygenous
system in which one male has many
females which is typically the way that
works what you do is you sideline all
those males which means the total amount
of Parental effort is lower and the
population can't grow so what what I'm
arguing is that you should expect to see
populations that face the possibility of
expansion endorse monogamy and at the
point that they have reached carrying
capacity you should expect to see
polygeny break back out and what we are
seeing is a kind of false sophistication
around polyamory which will end up
breaking down into polygyny which will
not be in the interests of most people
really the only people whose interests
it could be argued to be in would be the
very small number of males at the top
who have many partners and everybody
else suffers is it possible to make the
argument if we focus in on those males
at the quote-unquote top with many
female Partners is it possible to say
that that's a sub-optimal life
that a single partner is the optimal
life well it depends what you mean I
have a feeling that you and I wouldn't
have to go very far to figure out that
um what might be evolutionarily optimal
doesn't match my values as a person and
I'm sure it doesn't match yours either
you know try to can we try to dig into
the that gap between those two sure
um I mean we can do it very simply uh
selection might favor your engaging in
war against a defenseless enemy or
genocide
right it's not hard to figure out how
that might put your genes at advantage
I don't know about you Lex I'm not
getting involved in no genocide it's not
going to happen I won't do it I will do
anything to avoid it so some part of me
has decided that my conscious self and
the values that I hold Trump my
evolutionary self
and
once you figure out that in some extreme
case that's true and then you realize
that that means it must be possible in
many other cases and you start going
through all of the things that selection
would favor and you realize that a fair
fraction of the time actually you're not
up for this you don't want to be some
robot on a mission that involves
genocide when necessary you want to be
your own person and accomplish things
that you think are valuable
and so among those
are not advocating you know let's
suppose you're in a position to be one
of those males at the top of a
polygenous system we both know why that
would be rewarding right but we also
both recognize it yeah sure lots of sex
yeah okay what else lots of sex and lots
of variety right so look
every red-blooded American slash Russian
male could understand why that's
appealing right on the other hand it is
up against an alternative which is
having a partner with whom one is bonded
especially closely right right and so
hey love right well you know I don't
wanna I don't wanna uh straw man the
polygamy position obviously polygeny is
complex and there's nothing that stops a
man presumably from loving multiple
partners and from them loving him back
but in terms of you know if love is your
thing there's a question about okay what
is the quality of love if it is divided
over multiple partners right and what is
the net consequence for love in a
society when multiple people will be
frozen out for every individual male in
this case who has it
um and what I would argue
is and you know this is weird to even
talk about but this is partially me just
talking from personal experience I think
there actually is a monogamy program in
us and it's not automatic but if you
take it seriously you can find it and
frankly marriage and it doesn't have to
be marriage but whatever it is that
results in a lifelong bond with a
partner has gotten a very bad rap you
know it's the butt of too many jokes but
the truth is it's hugely rewarding it's
not easy but if you know that you're
looking for something right if you know
that the objective actually exists and
it's not some utopian fantasy that can't
be found if you know that there's some
real world you know warts and all
version of it then you might actually
think hey that is something I want and
you might pursue it and my guess is
you'd be very happy when you find it
yeah I think there is uh getting to the
fundamentals of the emergent I feel like
there is some kind of physics of love so
one we there's a conservation thing
going on so if you have like many
partners
yeah in theory you should be able to
love all of them deeply but it seems
like in reality that love gets split
yep now there's another law that's
interesting in terms of monogamy I don't
know if it's at the physics level but if
you are in a monogamous relationship by
choice
and almost as
um in slight Rebellion to social norms
that's much more powerful like if you
choose that one partnership that's also
more powerful if you if like everybody's
in a monogamous there's this pressure to
be married in this precious Society
that's different because that's almost
like a constraint and your freedom that
is enforced by something other than your
own ideals it's by by somebody else when
you yourself choose to I guess create
these constraints that enriches that
love so there's some kind of love
function
like E equals MC squared but for love
that I feel like if you have less
partners and is done by choice that can
maximize that and that love can
transcend the biology Transcendent
evolutionary biology forces that have to
do much more with survival and all those
kinds of things it can transcend to take
us to to a richer experience which will
have the luxury of having exploring of
Happiness of of Joy or fulfillment all
those kinds of things totally agree with
us and there's no question that by
choice when there are other choices
imbues it with meaning that it might not
otherwise have I would also say you know
I'm
I'm really struck by and I have a hard
time not feeling
terrible sadness over
what
younger people are coming to think about
this topic
I think they're missing something so
important and so hard to phrase that and
they don't even know that they're
missing it
they might know that they're unhappy but
they don't understand what it is they're
even looking for because nobody's really
been honest with them about what their
choices are and I have to say if I was a
young person or if I was advising a
young person which I used to do again a
million years ago when I was a college
professor four years ago but I used to
you know talk to students I knew my
students really well and they would ask
questions about this and they were
always curious because Heather and I
seem to have a good relationship and
many of them knew both of us so they
would talk to us about this
if I was advising somebody I would say
Do not bypass the possibility that what
you are supposed to do is find somebody
Worthy
somebody who can handle it somebody who
you are compatible with and that you
don't have to be perfectly compatible
it's not about dating until you find the
one it's about finding somebody who's
underlying values and Viewpoint are
complementary to yours sufficient that
you fall in love
if you find that person
opt out together
get out of this damn system that's
telling you what's sophisticated to
think about love and romance and sex
ignore it together right that's the key
and I believe you'll end up laughing in
the end if you do it you'll discover
wow that's a hellscape that I opted out
of and this thing I opted into
complicated difficult worth it nothing
that's worth it is ever not difficult so
we should we should even just skip the
whole statement about difficult yeah all
right I just I want to be honest it's
not like oh it's you know it's non-stop
Joy no it's freaking complex but
um but worth it no question in my mind
is there advice outside of love that you
can give to young people
you were a million years ago a professor
is there advice you can give to young
people high schoolers college students
about career about life yeah but it's
not they're not going to like it because
it's not easy to operationalize so and
this was a problem when I was a college
professor too people would ask me what
they should do should they go to
graduate school I had almost nothing
useful to say because the the job market
and the market of you know pre-job
training and all of that these things
are all so
distorted and corrupt that I didn't want
to point anybody to anything right
because it's all broken and I would tell
them that
but I would say that results in a kind
of uh meta level advice that I do think
is useful
you don't know what's coming
you don't know where the opportunities
will be
you should invest in tools rather than
knowledge right to the extent that you
can do things you can repurpose that no
matter what the future brings to the
extent that you know if you as a robot
guy right you've got the skills of a
robot guy now if
civilization failed and the stuff of
robot building disappeared with it
you'd still have the mind of a robot guy
and the mind of a robot guy can retool
around all kinds of things whether
you're you know forced to work with you
know you know fibers that are made into
ropes right your your Mechanical Mind
would be useful in all kinds of places
so invest in tools like that that can be
easily repurposed and invest in
combinations of tools right if
civilization keeps
limping along
you're going to be up against all sorts
of people who have studied the things
that you studied right if you think hey
computer programming is really really
cool and you pick up computer
programming guess what you just entered
a large group of people who have that
skill and many of them will be better
than you almost certainly
on the other hand if you combine that
with something else that's very rarely
combined with it if you have
I don't know if it's carpentry and
computer programming if you take
combinations of things that are even if
they're both common but they're not
commonly found together
and those combinations create a rarified
space where you inhabit it and even if
the things don't even really touch
but nonetheless they create a mind in
which the two things are live and you
can move back and forth between them and
you know step out of your own
perspective by moving from one to the
other
that will increase what you can see and
the quality of your tools and so anyway
that isn't useful advice it doesn't tell
you whether you should go to graduate
school or not but it does tell you the
one thing we can say for certain about
the future is that it's uncertain and so
prepare for it and like you said there's
cool things to be discovered in the
intersection of uh fields and ideas and
I would look at grad school that way
actually if you do go
or
I see I mean this is such a like every
course in grad school undergrad too was
like this little journey that you're on
that explores a particular field and and
it's not immediately obvious how useful
it is
but it allows you to to discover
intersections between that thing and
some other thing so you you're bringing
to the table this
these pieces of knowledge some of which
when intersected might create a niche
that's completely novel unique and will
bring you Joy I have that I mean I took
a huge number of courses in theoretical
computer science most of them seem
useless but they totally changed the way
I see the world uh in ways that are I'm
not prepared or is a little bit
difficult to kind of make explicit but
taken together
they've allowed me to see for example
the world of Robotics totally different
and different from many of my colleagues
and friends and so on and I think that's
a good way to see if you go to grad
school as
um
as a opportunity to explore
intersections of fields even if the
individual Fields seem useless yeah and
useless doesn't mean useless right
useless means not directly applicable
not directly a good useless course can
be the best one you ever took
um yeah I took uh James Joyce uh course
on James Joyce and that was truly
useless
well I took uh I took immunobiology in
the medical school when I was at Penn as
uh I guess I would have been a freshman
or a sophomore I wasn't supposed to be
in this class
it blew my goddamn mind and it still
does right I mean we had this I don't
even know who it was but we had this
great Professor who was like highly
placed in the world of immunobiology you
know the course is called immunobiology
not Immunology
immunobiology it had the right focus and
as I recall it
professors stood
sideways to the chalkboard staring off
into space literally stroking his beard
with this bemused look on his face
through the entire lecture and you know
he had all these medical students who
were so furiously writing notes that I
don't even think they were noticing the
person delivering this thing but you
know I got what this guy was smiling
about it was like so what he was
describing you know adaptive immunity is
so marvelous right that it was like
almost a privilege to even be saying it
to a room full of people who were
listening you know but anyway yeah I
took that course and you know lo and
behold
Suddenly It's front and center and wow
my glad I took it but um anyway yeah
useless courses are great and actually
Eric
gave me one of the greater pieces of
advice at least for college that
anyone's ever given which was don't
worry about the prereqs take it anyway
all right but now I don't even know if
kids can do this now because the prereqs
are now enforced by a computer but back
in the day
if you didn't mention that you didn't
have the prereqs nobody stopped you from
taking the course and what he told me
which I didn't know was that often the
advanced courses are easier in some way
the materials complex
but you know it you know it's not like
intro bio where you're learning a
thousand things at once right it's like
focused on something so if you dedicate
yourself you can you can pull it off
yeah stay with an idea for many weeks at
a time and it's ultimately rewarding and
not as difficult as it looks yeah
can I ask you a ridiculous question
please
what do you think is the meaning of life
well
I feel terrible having to give you the
answer I realize you asked the question
but if I tell you you're gonna again
feel bad I don't want to do that but
look there's two there can be a
disappointment there's no it's going to
be a horror right
because we actually know the answer to
the question oh no it's completely
meaningless there is nothing that we can
do that escapes the heat death of the
universe or whatever it is that happens
at the end and we're not going to make
it there anyway but even if you were
optimistic about our ability to escape
every existential
Hazard indefinitely ultimately it's off
or not and We Know It Right
that said once you stare into that abyss
and then it stares back and laughs or
whatever happens right then the question
is okay
given that can I relax a little bit
right and figure out well what would
make sense if that were true right and I
think there's something very clear to me
I think if you do all of the you know if
I just take the values that I'm sure we
share and extrapolate from them I think
the following thing is actually a moral
imperative
being a human and having opportunity is
absolutely fucking awesome right A lot
of people don't make use of the
opportunity and a lot of people don't
have opportunity right they get to be
human but they're too constrained by
keeping a roof over their heads to
really be free but being a free human
is fantastic and being a free human on
this beautiful planet crippled as it may
be is
unparalleled I mean what could be better
how lucky are we that we get that right
so if that's true
that it is awesome to be human and to be
free
then surely it is Our obligation to
deliver that opportunity to as many
people as we can
and how do you do that well I think I
know what job one is job one is we have
to get sustainable
the way to get the maximum number of
humans to have that opportunity to be
both here and free is to make sure that
there isn't a limit on how long we can
keep doing this that effectively
requires us to reach sustainability
and then at sustainability you could
have a horror show of sustainability
right you could have a totalitarian
sustainability
that's not the objective the objective
is to liberate people and so the
question the whole fourth Frontier
question frankly is how do you get to a
sustainable and indefinitely sustainable
state in which people feel liberated in
which they are liberated to pursue the
things that actually matter to pursue uh
Beauty truth compassion connection all
of those things that we could list as
unalloyed Goods
those are the things that people should
be most liberated to do in a system that
really functions and anyway my point is
I don't know how precise that
calculation is but I'm pretty sure it's
not wrong it's accurate enough and if it
is accurate enough then the point is
okay well there's no ultimate meaning
but the proximate meaning is that one
how many people can we get to have this
wonderful experience that we've gotten
to have right and
there's no way that's so wrong that if I
invest my life in it that I'm making
some big error for that life is awesome
and we want to spread the awesome as
much as possible yeah you sum it up that
way spread The Awesomes spread those so
that's the fourth Frontier and if that
fails if the fourth Frontier fails the
fifth Frontier will be defined by robots
and hopefully they'll learn the lessons
uh that the of the mistakes that the
humans made and build a better world I
hope we're very happy here and that they
do a better job with the place than we
did
but I can't believe it took us this long
uh to talk as I as I mentioned to you
before that we haven't actually spoken
I think at all and I I've always felt
that we're already friends I don't know
how that works because I've listened to
your podcast a lot I've also sort of uh
love your brother and so like it it was
like we've known each other for the
longest time and I hope we can be
friends and we could talk often again I
hope to that you get a chance to meet
some of my robot friends as well and
fall in love and I'm so glad that you
love robots uh as well so we get to
share in that love so I can't wait for
us uh to interact together so we went
from
talking about some of the worst failures
of humanity to some of the most
beautiful aspects of humanity what else
can you uh ask for from a conversation
thank you so much for talking to you
know Alex I feel uh the same way towards
you and I really appreciate it this has
been a lot of fun and I'm looking
forward to our next one
thanks for listening to this
conversation with bright Weinstein and
thank you to Jordan Harbor to show
expressvpn magic spoon and for sigmatic
check them out in the description to
support this podcast and now let me
leave you with the words from Charles
Darwin
ignorance more frequently begets
confidence than does knowledge it is
those who know little not those who know
much who so positively assert this or
that problem will never be solved by
science
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time